The size of her socks
by JadeEye
Summary: Little scenes from Darien and Serena's life. 1 Heh...Darien on socks. 2. Bed problems. 3. Messy house. 4 Beach sand and peeling skin. 5. Saturday morning anime. 6. First trip alone. 7. Cat naps 8. Delivery. 9. On showers. 10. Housewife 11. New Arrival.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I told myself I'd NEVER write one of these. And now I have.

ARRRGHHH! I WANT TO STOP WRITING CLICHÉS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways. Setting is only slightly AU; pretend that Darien and Serena were friendly – maybe a little more than friendly – before they found out each other's identities and that we're in a future in which Sailor Stars didn't happen.

Serena's poem references (chosen purely for convenience) are to "Locks of Gold," which can be found on EightofSwords' page. Also be on the lookout for manga and anime references

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

-

The Size of Her Socks

-

The size of her socks still fascinates him.

They've been married for almost two years now, and in those twenty-one months, he's probably done the laundry a dozen times. It doesn't sound like many times, and it isn't, not because he's a lazy husband (he does far more household chores than Serena) but because they transform so often to deal with minor youma, giving all their clothes the equivalent of a dry-cleaning each time, and because Serena is so fond of the Luna Pen, that they never end up having much laundry to do.

This afternoon, he crouches in front of the dryer, bracing his shoulder against it as he leans inside to reach for a stray white sock. Still a little staticky, it folds to his fingers when he grasps it and pulls it out. It is white with a pink stripe around the cuff, like most of her socks, and it is small, so small that it fits in his hand, shorter than the length from his wrist to his fingertips.

As he crouches there, in front of the dryer, holding the little white sock, he finds himself thinking…

…of the second time they met, when she threw her shoe at him. He had stooped down to pick it up from the sidewalk and studied it (in the same way, perhaps, that Cinderella's prince had stared at her glass slipper when he found it, awed and slightly incredulous, thinking that surely no earthly girl had feet this small!) before she stomped over and snatched the shoe from his hand with an embarrassed blush. He had looked down at her foot as she stood in front of him, suspicious, half expecting to see that she'd chopped her toes off like one of Grimm's stepsisters, or at the very least, to watch her struggle to shove a clumsy, too-large foot into the child-sized Mary Janes. But he had only seen a pink-socked foot slip easily into the shiny black shoe, which was even a little loose until she fastened the clasps tightly around her ankle. Even though she'd been in middle school then, and he'd been in a lofty high school sophomore, he'd followed that ankle up a slender leg until meeting (with disappointment) the navy pleat of her skirt.

…of the time, not long after that second meeting, when he'd chanced to see, as she showed it to Motoki, the A+ that she'd received on a poem that she wrote for a literature assignment. She'd flushed when he had glimpsed it and stuffed it back into her bag before he could read more than one of the lines (something about being plucked, trailing roots). He hadn't uttered a single word of insult to her that day, too intrigued by that line, trying to fit it like a puzzle piece into what he knew about her life. When her friends had come in, Motoki had opened his mouth to tell them about her wonderful poem, and she had stepped back, sinking her heel onto a foot that she must have thought to be Motoki's. His own pained gasp had accomplished the objective anyway, cutting Motoki off. She had cast him a slightly apologetic but also highly panicked look that he had noticed only after he noticed how very small her foot was on top of his. It seemed vulnerable, as vulnerable as the panicked look on her face as she stared up over her shoulder at him, clearly certain that he was about to finish what Motoki had begun and tell her friends about the poem. He hadn't, he had only said, "Don't you have a math test to be studying for, Odango, instead of tripping over my feet," which had sparked a similar comments from Rei and scolding from the girls and Motoki and had taken everyone's attention entirely off of her poem.

…of his seventeenth birthday, when he'd gone to brood at the park, alone and too old and wishing that his life had gone a million different ways than it had. He'd sat on the neglected, rotting wooden dock half-hidden behind the rose gardens, half hoping to be found but aware that the only person who might look for him had a shift until nine. But the sun had just begun to set when panting and the sound of struggling in the bushes behind him reached his ears, and he turned just in time to see her tumble out of them, hair mussed, face flushed, and eyes bright. She hadn't said anything, just slid off her scratched Mary Janes and frilly socks, and settled beside him on the dock, skirt brushing his pant leg. He remembered watching her small pink feet, too small to reach the murky water in which he trailed his own bare feet, her toes dangling above it instead, until she scooted to the very edge of the dock. He'd grabbed her by her arm furthest from him, hand gripping her elbow and arm against her shoulder blades, and she had been very still and not looked at him. (He could recall wondering if the pounding he felt where the inside of his elbow pressed against her back was from her heartbeat or his own pulse.) Then a small foot had hooked under his own in the water, tugging it closer so that his foot was hugged by both of hers, suspended in that murky water.

…of the night, that heart-stopping, mouth-with-bile-filling night, when he arrived at the scene of a youma attack, vest and tuxedo shirt slick with sweat against his skin, and seen a youma cackling happily amidst the unconscious bodies, and seen that small, small red boot beneath the wreckage of a downed streetlight and an overturned car.

…and of that first morning, waking up with a ring around his finger and able to feel hers, cool on her warm finger where her hand lay curled on his chest. He had been able to see her small foot, peeking out from beneath the comforter, overwhelming him with the fresh-as-sunlight realization that the foot belonged to his _wife_ –

"Darien?" Her voice comes from the kitchen, accompanied by the jangle of her keys landing on the table. Her heels click toward the laundry room, and Darien straightens, too eager to see that special glow that always lights her eyes when he does a household chore (she says it reminds her of a dream she had once) to remember that her sock is still in his hand.

She stops in the doorway of the laundry room, tugging at one of the curls that always wisps around her ears. Her eyes take a moment longer than usual to meet his, and when they do, her smile seems a shade apprehensive.

Before he can question her, her gaze slides to the sock, making him aware that he is still holding it. Her brows lift a little, as do the corners of her lips. She crosses her arms, leaning against the doorjamb and regarding him for a moment. Then she pushes herself away from it, stepping close to him, and winds an arm around his neck.

"Sweetheart," she says. Her temple moves against his jaw as she speaks. "What are you doing with my sock?"

He looks at the sock. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Realizes that there is really no answer that could be less strange than the truth. So he says honestly, "Admiring it."

Against his neck, her face creases in that adorable expression her face takes on when she is confused and trying to figure something out. He pulls away slightly to watch her face as she tugs at the sock at in his hand, an idle game of tug of war between his fingers and hers.

After a moment, she asks in a dry tone that she probably learned from him, "Should I be worried?"

"No," he says, aware still of a raw tension in her body. He pulls the sock from her grasp and puts it in his pocket. "I have something better to admire now."

He tightens his arm around her waist, leaning her backward. With his other hand he trails his fingertips down the thin fabric of her blouse, tracing down her waist to her leg. She giggles, squirming away from him, her arms sliding from around his neck to bat at his tickling fingers. She is nearly parallel to the floor now, and only his arm around her waist holds her up – until he sneakily, abruptly, lets go. She collapses into the laundry basket full of clean clothes.

Her giggles cut off abruptly,; she stares at up at him with an absolutely shocked expression, eyes wide and lips parted in an O. His grin widens, and as though the sight flips a switch, her shocked expression gives way to a spill of laughter. She kicks her legs, the ambition for revenge glinting in her eyes as she tries to scramble back to her feet, but he crouches down quickly, trapping her knees by planting his forearms on top of them.

She's still laughing at him, leaning forward with her bangs brushing his, her hands splayed on either side of him as she tries to push herself out of the laundry basket. "What are you up to, Shields?" she demands playfully.

His grin widens. "You'll see, _Shields_."

She rolls her eyes at him, but the bright smile on her face is as impossible to miss as the delight in his voice.

He settles back, Indian-style, on the floor and grabs one of her legs, setting her foot on his knees. He glances up to see again that adorable confused expression which, when she catches him watching her, becomes one of amused curiosity.

"Go on," she says, flapping her hand at him like an indulgent queen. Underneath the amusement and curiosity, though, he still sees the other emotion lurking.

He slips off the surprisingly modest pink suede pump that the Luna Pen dressed her in that morning and takes the sock from his pocket. He puts it on her foot.

Then he looks up at her, back down at the door, and back up at her. He sees realization dawning in her eyes, pushing out the other emotion, and he is so relieved to see it banished that the relief spills into his voice as particularly enthusiastic dramatic flair as he proclaims, "Why, it fits! Could it be that you are the fair maiden with whom I danced at the ball?"

She is laughing so hard that she is bent over double on her throne of clean clothes. He grins at her, one hand on her midriff, which seems for some reason warmer than usual, and the other on her ankle, running his thumb back and forth over the patch of skin above her sock.

At last the giggles die out, leaving a smile behind on her face. She tucks two stray curls behind her ears and just looks at him, smiling softly. "You're better than a fairy tale, you know."

He tucks another curl behind her ear. "You're just saying that because I did the laundry."

She considers this with a grin. "Maybe." Her eyes flick back up his, and his breath catches; they have suddenly become searching again, almost shifting back to raw…

He squeezes her foot. "Are you going to tell me what's up now?"

She looks down at his hand around her foot. It is as small in his hand as her sock was. She seems to be thinking.

"Are _you _going to tell me why you were admiring my sock?" she says slowly, raising a brow to place emphasis on 'admiring.'

He squeezes her foot again, confused but willing to play her game. He wants this uncertainty in her eyes to dissipate. "I was thinking about how small it was." He bumps her forehead with his. "Small sock for a small person."

His other hand is still on her waist. She places her hand over it and places the other on the back of his head, keeping his forehead against hers.

Her whisper brushes his lips. "We're going to need smaller socks for a smaller person."

For a moment, Darien is very still. His mind seems to swoop from his body from a moment, soaring somewhere far, far away above him.

When it returns, he is kissing her fiercely, his hands as tight on her hips as hers are in his hair, and he finds himself thinking about how, years from now, he will pull a small white sock from the dryer and remember this moment.

They've been married for almost two years now, and in those twenty-one months, he had become sure that it wasn't possible for him to be any happier.

He doesn't mind being wrong.

-


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Plot bunnies keep pouncing, and most of them consist of Darien and Serena in their married life, so I figured the best method to dispose of – I mean, DEAL with them was to post them as a series of vignettes. I've always hated the idea of any couple I support being married (or even officially together, really) in a story, since all the fun seems to fizzle out of the relationship once that happens, so I guess all these predatory plot bunnies are my subconscious's attempt to show me otherwise? I'm not sure. Anyway, these vignettes probably won't be in chronological order, and they should all take place in about the same slightly AU-niverse where Sailor Stars didn't occur.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

-

Their first few nights after returning from the honeymoon, they didn't get much sleep. And not for the reasons everyone thought. No, it was, rather, a matter of…well…

Serena flipped over onto her side with a sigh. She knew without looking that beside her, Darien was lying on his back, his hands knit behind his head, and studying the ceiling.

"Sorry," she whispered, although there was hardly any point in being quite; they were the only two in the house, and they were both _awake. _Unfortunately. "I won't kick anymore, I PROMISE."

She heard his hair slide against the pillow as he turned his head to look at her. "It's okay."

He sounded almost amused, but that was impossible. How could he be amused by the fact that her tendency to kick in her sleep had just woken him up for the third night in a row?

"It's not okay," she grumbled, and flopped back onto her back. She grabbed the comforter draped over her and yanked at it like horse reins, snapping it out. Then she quickly snatched it back again, unable to understand how Darien could dislike sleeping with the comforter. It was COLD without the heavy blanket.

"This isn't how it works in the movies," she said loudly, glaring at the ceiling as though this whole conundrum was the ceiling's fault. "If this was a movie, my elbow wouldn't bruise you, and your arm wouldn't fall asleep from having my head on top of it, and my hair wouldn't get all tangled up and nearly suffocate us both in the middle of the night…"

She trailed off dismally. Never, in all her years of dreaming about finally being married to Darien, had she ever foreseen even one of these complications. Sure, she'd been panicked about the first night, the whole _sleeping together_ thing, since everyone, from her mother to her friends to her old junior high teacher had offered highly different advice (and slightly alarming) advice. But no one ever said anything about the nights AFTER the honey moon when the two of you were just trying to sleep, and you realized that one of you liked ALL the covers, and the other didn't, and you couldn't quite fall asleep in each other's arms without getting a dreadful case of pins and needles –

"True," said Darien, breaking off her mental tirade. "But no one in the movies has hair quite as long as yours, Odango."

His use of her nickname calmed Serena down a bit. She inhaled and rolled over to see that he had turned onto his side to look at her, using his arm as a pillow.

She huffed at him. "Maybe I should cut it off, then."

He half smiled and reached with his free arm to sift a few strands of her hair through his fingers. "Now you're just fishing for compliments."

"Are you going to bite?" She gave him a hopeful expression that, before he could say anything, sank quickly back into gloom. "Darien, I'm serious! I'm always cold, you're always hot, I kick like crazy AND I hog the bed! What if – " She broke off, flushing dark, yanked the covers over her head, and mumbled something.

Darien's brows knit. He pushed himself up on an elbow. "What was that?" he said to the lump under the covers.

Something was mumbled again.

"Sorry – " He twitched the comforter back, revealing Serena's flushed face. "Still didn't catch it."

She flushed even darker, buried her head under her pillow, and said in a small voice, "I don't want you to get sick of it and decide you want a divorce."

Darien choked on a snicker. "Odango." He shook his head. "Do you remember how many years I spent waking up from nightmares about the Silver Millennium? And then ones about you dying?" He pulled the pillow away from her head and fixed her wide blue eyes with his. "Getting woken up by your pint-sized feet is like being kissed awake compared to that."

He regarded her closely, then, and not just to see if what he'd said had accomplished its goal of comforting her. Her eyes had begun to sparkle with an unholy light that their near-decade together had taught him to associate with mischief.

Sure enough, barely a second passed before he felt a toe brush his leg.

"Like being kissed awake, huh?" said Serena wickedly.

Darien made a sound in his throat and trapped her foot with his leg, leaning forward.

But she sat up before he could kiss her, her face devastated all over again. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gotten distracted! This is too important. We've barely gotten ANY sleep, Darien. Look at the bags!" She pulled at the skin beneath her eyes, dragging the darkened skin down with her fingers, and used her thumbs to do the same to the rings under his eyes. "We'll wither away from sleep deprivation! What are we going to DO?"

Darien grasped her wrists to pull her hands away from his eyes. "We'll get used to it."

"How do you get used to THIS?" Dramatically, in imitation of the way she tended to flail in her sleep, Serena threw her arms out wide. One of her hands smacked into his chest.

He laughed at her theatrics. "Didn't you have to get used to some of Lita's habits when you guys roomed together during college?"

He watched her chew her lip dubiously. "Yeah, but we weren't sleeping in the same bed."

"I certainly hope not," said Darien, cocking a brow at her.

She giggled. Then she opened her mouth again –

Before she could start talking again about how he would divorce her if she kept kicking him while they slept, he reached out and hooked an arm around her waist, pulling her toward him, her silky pajamas whispering across the sheets. He lowered his face to hers, inhaling the citrusy scent of the soap she'd used to wash her face before bed.

"Remember the first time we did this?" He touched his lips to hers, making sure to bump his nose against hers in the same way he had the first few times they had kissed, awkwardly, uncertainly. "We had to get used to it, didn't we?"

"Yeah," she admitted, giggling again. She rubbed her nose, keeping a hand curled in his white t-shirt. "Especially when you were wearing your glasses."

"See?" He bumped her nose with his again. "We got used to that. We'll get used to this." He shifted a little, trying to get blood flow back into the arm he had wound under her waist. "Eventually."

She laughed again and released his shirt, scooting back so he could retract his arm. But then she flopped back down onto her pillow, pouting up at him and brushing her fingertips across the rings beneath his eyes again. "But what are we supposed to do until then? It's not like we can just NOT sleep."

Darien rolled onto his stomach, planting his forearms on either side of her waist and touching his forehead to hers. "Well," he said against her lips, "We _could_ do something that will tire us out so much that getting kicked in our sleep won't wake us up."

The mischievous sparkle entered Serena's eyes again. She laughed and wound her arms around his neck.

-

A/N: If I know how people feel about these vignettes, I'll be more likely to write more, so please leave a review. Did Serena and Darien seem in character, like this is a conversation they might actually have?


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: This one kind of explains how Serena started using the Luna Pen for her clothes. Takes place some time after the second vignette about sleeping but WAY before the sock vignette.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

-

Serena has a tendency toward messes. Darien, upon entering their bedroom – or any room of the house, really – is reminded of the pictures his high school chemistry book used to illustrate entropy. Low entropy would be represented by a picture of their bedroom after Darien had tidied it up last Sunday, clearing the floor and the clutter from the nightstands and dressers. High entropy would be represented by the bedroom as it looked now, on Tuesday night, half-buried in Serena's discarded outfits from the early weekday mornings when she zooms around like a hurricane trying to decide what to wear.

As he watched her fussing over what to wear tomorrow from his sprawled position on the bed, his notes for the next day's surgeries in front of him, he thought that she was the force of entropy embodied. Ironic considering that she was the one who defeated Chaos, but perhaps, he mused with a grin curving his mouth above the hand on which he had propped his chin, Chaos yielded precisely because it recognized Serena's superior ability to generate disorder.

She turned to look at the mirror, holding a filmy blouse against her nek, and instead, caught sight of his grin. "What?"

He shook his head, trying to hide his amusement, for he was pretty sure she wouldn't exactly appreciate what he was thinking. "Nothing."

"Darien Shields." She stretched the syllables of his name out in a deep, meant-to-be-menacing voice. Then her voice snapped back ot its usual soprano. "You were laughing at me!"

Darien rolled over with his notes, directing his grin, which he was unable to swallow, at the window. "Odango, believe it or not, everyone's world doesn't revolve around you."

A pillow landed on his head. Then a much heavier, warmer weight landed on his stomach, sprawling across his ribs.

"Maybe not, but YOUR world better," she said, wriggling forward to cover his sheaf of notes with her elbows in a nonverbal cue that quite clearly stated, _Pay attention to me_. She could be such a little kid sometimes.

"More like yours should revolve around me," he returned, rolling back onto his back and pushing himself up onto his elbows to keep his face level with hers. "The moon orbits the earth, remember."

"They exert gravitational pull on each other!" cried Serena indignantly. This was a point she had quite adamantly investigated during her college astronomy class, since it bothered her to think that the moon didn't have some sort of reciprocal effect on the earth, that it just happened to be there because the earth had been the body closest to it and large enough to pull it in. It was like believing that she and Darien only loved each other because their past incarnations had loved each other. And that was absolutely untrue.

"I know, I know." Darien reached for her to pull her out of her perpendicular position on top of him to something a little more parallel, but as he pulled her closer, her elbows dragged across his sheaf of notes and sent them cascading to the floor. Darien craned his neck to see them scattered across the carpet and let his head drop back down to the the comforter with a sigh.

Serena propped her chin on her hands on top of his chest and regarded him. "What? They're just papers. We'll pick them up later."

He pressed his lips together for a moment. "Do you ever think maybe the hourse is a little…messy?"

"Well…" Serena traced her fingertips in absent circles across his shirt as she pondered this. "Maybe. I mean, you tend to leave coffee mugs everywhere."

Darien blinked. That was not what the response he had expected.

Thinking about it, he supposed he did tend to use a new mug every time he poured a fresh cup of coffee, and he didn't always bring them back to the sink…

But it wasn't as though he was the source of the _majority_ of the mess in the house.

"And pens. You're always leaving pens and sticky notes all over the place. And your stethoscopes. But I don't mind the pens so much, because they're very convenient to have all over when you're sitting at the couch and want to do the crossword but you don't want to walk to the office to get something to write with." Serena nodded to herself.

Darien was slightly speechless. "Well… I'll work on all that, I guess."

"Not the pens, though," she reminded him, nuzzling her head against his chin.

"Not the pens," he agreed mechanically, still finding it slightly difficult to reconnect his brain to his mouth. Maybe that was why what came out of his mouth next came out. "Actually, I was thinking about how your clothes are always all over the place."

Serena blinked at him. Then slowly, her chin swiveled on her hand to regard the room. A silky blouse was draped over the lamp; another shirt hung from the doorknob; two each hung from the doors of the closet; a skirt dangled from the bedpost; and two incomplete outfit ensembles and three unmatching shoes littered the floor.

"Hmm," she said. And turned her head back to give him that adorable, sheepish, dazzling smile that was second in his heart only to her adorable confused expression. "Oops?"  
"Not that I don't like your clothes," he explained. "But they look better on you than all over the room."

She sighed, digging her chin into his sternum. "I know, I know. But it's just so hard to decide on what to wear every day! Everything seems like I've worn it before! So I have to try everything on and experiment! And then I get too tired to hang it all up again…" Another sigh escaped her. "It's dressing room lethargy."

Recognizing that 'dressing room lethargy' was probably one of her Serena-isms, Darien decided to forego figuring out its exact definition and thought instead.

An idea occurred to him. She could just use the Luna Pen to show her what she would look like in whatever skirt and shirt combination she planned to wear, and she wouldn't have to take them all down and try them on.

He opened his mouth to share this plan. But he only got as far as, "Why don't you use the Luna Pen – " before Serena gasped.

"That's an AMAZING idea!" she exclaimed, eyes alight.

She jumped off of him, the heel of her hand pushing rather painfully into his clavicle for a moment, and darted to the mirror, brandishing her glittery pink pen. "I can use the Luna Pen for my outfits! Luna Pen, dress me up in a comfy but really pretty professional outfit for work tomorrow!"

A flash of lights later, she stood in a powder blue short-sleeved suit jacket with cropped dress pants. She grinned and spun in the mirror, extending her leg in front of her to admire the strappy powder-blue sandals on her feet, then turned back to Darien. The wide grin she gave him was just enough warning for him to brace himself as she threw herself at him in a rib-crushing hug.

"You're a GENIUS!" she proclaimed.

Darien, taking the opportunity to admire the strappy blue sandals himself, did not mind conceding that this was true.

-

That night, after they had picked up the strewn garments and hung them neatly on her side of the closet and regathered Darien's notes, they ended up in the kitchen: Serena for her bedtime snack of Pocky and Darien joining her for once. He scooped some mocha cappucino blitz ice cream into a bowl (four scoops, since he knew Serena would end up asking him for a bite, and for Serena, a bite meant approximately two scoops).

She had just finished her last stick of Pocky and was eyeing the bowl of ice cream when her eyes landed on something peeking out from behind the stereo set that was in the corner of the kitchen, behind the table.

"I was wondering where this had gone!" she exclaimed happily, jumping up to stretch behind the console for the crumpled pink fabric. With a huff, she managed to reach it and held it up. It was a light pink blouse with fake pearl buttons. "Remember it?"

Darien, his eyes landing on it as he turned from putting the ice cream carton back in the freezer, spluttered and turned as pink as the fabric. Yes, he remembered it alright.

"Oh, but I'll have to sew some of these buttons back on before I can wear it," Serena mused, turning it over in her hands.

Darien couldn't be sure, but he rather thought that there was mischief tinting her voice. He became even more certain when she looked up then, blinking far too innocently, and asked, "Do you remember what happened to them?"

Despite the color still dusting his cheeks, he sat down at the table and just as innocently took a bite of ice cream. "Yes, but I was too distracted to pay attention to where they went."

Serena perched on the table in front of his chair, next to the bowl of ice cream, and took the spoon from him to take her own bite. Then she tapped her chin with the spoon. "You know, sweetheart, I'm starting to think that maybe it's not all _my_ fault that my clothes seem to end up scattered all over the house."

Darien, watching her grin impishly at him and remembering the exact circumstances in which the pink blouse had lost its buttons and ended up behind the stereo, was forced to concede that this was true.

He also conceded, as he took the ice cream from her and put it on the table, that maybe he had been wrong when he said her clothes looked better on her than all over the room.

"Admit it," she giggled against his lips a while later. "A little mess isn't so bad."

And Darien conceded to that, too.

-

A/N: *dazed look* Ah…so indecent… Please review so I don't feel quite so guilty about writing this sort of thing…


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: This vignette takes place some time after the last one about messes. For the sake of the vignette, let's pretend that sunburn begins to peel very soon after one gets it.

Also: thank you so much for everyone's responses to the series! I'm glad you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Not even a funny disclaimer!

-

-

"No – ow, ow, ow – Darien, please – "

"Would you stop wiggling around already?"

"But it hurts – "

"If you want me to stop, just say so!"

"No, don't – " She gasped and arched. "_Oh_!"

-

_Several hours earlier:_

Darien had hoped that his tendency to wake up at the crack of dawn would take a break during their vacation. Much as he appreciated his ability to function as his own alarm clock (a useful skill considering Serena's own uncanny ability to throw her arms out in her sleep and silence the alarm clock the very instant it began ringing, without him being any the wiser that it had gone off) when he had to worry about getting to work on time, being up early when he was on vacation was more of a curse than a blessing.

If he had something to do, it might be a little different.

But there weren't any youma at the beach. (There probably weren't any back in Tokyo, either, although Lita and the others had promised they would sleep with one eye open just in case.)

And the nephrology books that he had packed to study while he was here had, he discovered last night, been snuck out of his suitcase and replaced with flower-covered swimming trunks and an absolutely fluorescent Hawaiian shirt. He had assured Serena that he wouldn't wear them even if it meant wearing his tuxedo on the beach. She had responded with pouting lips and pulled his favorite navy blue swimming trunks out of her own suitcase.

Darien rolled over now onto his back, using his bare feet to push the sheets off his legs.

The room was already warm – they had left the balcony doors open last night, letting in the balmy, salt-tangy breeze from the water – and Serena beside him radiated warmth, more like a miniature sun than a moon. But she'd always been like that, really, he reflected briefly, and he rather thought he liked it better that way.

Turning onto his side, he turned his studying eyes to his wife.

She was curled up on her side, facing him, bundled up in the thin white sheet like an infant wrapped against the cold, only her face peeking out. It was pink, a faint sheen of perspiration gluing her curled golden bangs to her cheeks in tiny curlicues.

Darien frowned. Serena only slept curled up like that when she had had a nightmare. Usually she slept stretched out, her limbs flung out like sunbursts, her hand in his face and her legs across his as often as not.

She seemed to be sleeping easily enough now, though. Her face was smooth and peaceful despite its flush.

Darien pushed the sheet back from her face a little, letting more air in, before he slid out of the bed, careful not to jar the mattress and wake her.

When they had first married, he had found himself wishing that she didn't sleep so late all the time. He had known of her sleeping habits before, of course – how many times had he teased her about them, after all? – but it was different when they were living together day after day. He had found himself slightly annoyed as he moved through his morning rituals, scooping out his coffee grinds, putting his bagel in the toaster, reading the newspaper, all very carefully and quietly so that he wouldn't wake her. He knew that few people on the planet, much less Serena, woke up as early as he did, but there had still been something grating about being awake while she still slept, unperturbed.

Then one day, Serena had kicked him out of the house to spend a "Guys' Night" with Motoki and Asanuma.

As they slid into a booth at a pizza joint – Motoki had refused to go to anywhere that served burgers, stating that he could eat as many as he wanted for free at the arcade – Darien had been surprised by how enthusiastic his two friends had been about being there. Asanuma was practically hugging Motoki, he seemed so happy to be out of the house, and Motoki was practically letting him, he seemed so happy about the same thing.

"Well, not that I don't love her," said Asanuma when Darien noted this with a lifted brow, "but I feel like I haven't seen anyone but Rei in forever! It's going to drive me insane!"

Motoki had nodded vigorously in agreement as he gulped from his margarita. Darien's eyebrow had twitched even further up.

"Sometimes it seems like Lita's always _there_," Motoki said, sighing. "In the afternoon, at night, in the morning… I think if there was just one little break in the day when I just had some space to myself, it would be okay."

"Right?" exclaimed Asanuma, slapping down his empty beer bottle in vigorous agreement. He motioned to the bartender for another one.

Darien, listening to all this with growing alarm – more because of the realization that he was listening to his friends vent as though they were a group of female friends in a chick flick than by any fear that Motoki and Asanuma's relationships were in actual jeopardy – came to an epiphany that was as unexpected and humbling as his realization that he was as much to blame in the house's mess as Serena was had been.

When he got home after their "Guys' Night," Serena had been sprawled out on the living room floor, sketchbook beneath her chin and girly pop music blaring from the stereo in the dining room.

He recognized from how far she was in her sketchbook (which had been brand-new and empty the day before), and from the sparkling eyes she lifted up at him as he shut the front door behind him, that she had been very productive while he was gone.

"Did you have fun?" she asked brightly, rolling on her stomach to grab the remote and turn down the music.

"Asanuma and Motoki are both drunk" was his answer.

"Wow. That much fun, huh?" She rolled over again, grinning up at him as he plopped down on the ottoman beside her. "And here I am working on a Saturday night. It's like we've switched personas from who we were when we met!"

"And vocabularies, too," he said, nudging her foot with his. "Persona's an SAT word." He leaned over to see her sketchbook. "Wow, you really got a lot of designs done tonight."

"Well, you know," she said modestly. "Alone Time can be very inspiring."

Darien had looked at her.

"Yeah," he'd said slowly. "I've noticed."

He'd paused then, massaging the arch of her foot with his toes. Then, "What time do you really wake up, Serena?"

She had blinked up at him. She'd opened her mouth…then closed it again. "And here I thought I kept the TV so low you wouldn't hear it."

"I didn't, really," he said. "Only once or twice. I thought they were isolated incidents when you'd woken up a little early. But Motoki and Asanuma were talking today about how being with Lita and Rei all the time was driving them insane, and I couldn't really empathize with them."

"So you figured it was because I pretend to sleep in at morning and give you time to yourself instead of just because I'm so adorable and wonderful that you could never get sick of me?"

She had batted her eyelashes, and he had laughed.

He had also never resented her for sleeping in again, even when she really _was _sleeping in and not just faking to give him time to himself.

His reminiscing done, Darien went to the kitchenette to make coffee. When it finished brewing a few minutes later, he stepped quietly out onto the balcony rail itself, as he had often done at his old apartment, and sipped from his mug. He watched the hazy morning light seep across the waves and sparkle on the sand.

Vaguely, he contemplated going downstairs for a newspaper, but he wanted to be able to hear if Serena had another nightmare.

It seemed strange to him that she would have had a nightmare, he thought as he swung his legs over the railing, sitting there with his legs swinging over the pool and the shoreline stretching out three stories beneath him.

She'd only had a handful of real nightmares (by real, he meant concerning anything more menacing than discovering that their pantry had run out of cookies) since their wedding last summer. For her to have one now, on the first day of their beach trip, seemed odd. She had been completely fine yesterday, splashing around in the waves, devising various plots to get sand in his hair, building castles with a random group of middle school kids who mistook her for one of them on their summer school trip to the beach.

"Don't jump!"

The gasped words behind him startled Darien nearly out of his skin. Only his fists, clenching in shocked reflex around the metal railing, kept him from toppling off the railing and splashing into the pool several stories below.

Serena, behind him, burst into a fountain of laughter. "Your face – "

" – w_asn't_ funny," he finished in a grumble, prying his fingers from the metal. He eyed the hand-shaped dent his grip had left behind.

Then he pushed himself up, drawing his legs out from where they had dangled in empty space to fold them beneath him, and flipped neatly backward off the rail to land in front of her, face ascowl.

She grinned back at his glower, as she usually did, and reached up to tousle his hair.

"I'm glad you decided life was still worth living," she said primly.

Then she frowned a little, brushing her fingers across his scalp. "Darien!" Now she was laughing again. "There's STILL sand in here!"

"Thanks to you," he said, blinking as a bit of sand showered past his face to spatter on the floor. "You dumped so much sand on me yesterday that it's probably entered my bloodstream by now. My cerebrospinal fluid, even."

"A big brain like yours can take a little sand now and then." Serena grabbed his hand with the mug in it and took a sip.

Her face blanched. "ICK! _Coffee_? Why didn't you warn me?"

"What did you think it was?" he said, amused.

"Orange juice!"

"In a _mug_?" But she was still spluttering, and he took pity on her. He cupped his hand in the air, summoning vapor from the ocean-drenched air to collect in his palm, then held it to her mouth.

She sipped cautiously, holding his wrist steady with her fingers, then grimaced.

"Salty," she explained at his arched brow.

"Well, aren't you just Miss Picky this morning."

"_Mrs._ Picky," she corrected, making another little face and taking another sip from his hand.

Her correction, and the feeling and sight of her delicately holding his hand to her lips was just a little too much; he took away his hand and replaced it with his lips.

Serena hummed happily, leaning into him.

After a minute, she broke away just enough to say, "We still have a no kissing after coffee rule, just so you know. The only reason I'm kissing you right now is because you made me drink icky coffee and saltwater. You don't taste any worse than my mouth already does."

"Rats, you discovered my evil plan," said Darien with mock disappointment, trapping her against the balcony railing.

Serena smiled against his chin, leaning away to say something else – then cried out.

"What?" Darien shot to immediate alertness, grabbing her by the shoulders in case she was about to fall backward.

But she cried out again, a little keening breath, and hunched her shoulders beneath his hands, pushing them off.

" – hurts," she hissed between her teeth. She twisted her head, looking back over her shoulder.

He gently turned her by the waist, pulling up the back of the light, baggy shirt that she had worn to sleep.

What he saw made him hiss as well. Serena's back was an angry, angry pink red, as though she had lain in a bath of red dye.

He pushed up her shirt higher, certain that the sunburn had to end somewhere, that Serena had just forgotten to put sun block on her lower back. But the angry red continued up, up, up, not even stopping at her hair. He could see the pink of her scalp beneath her thick braids.

"Odango," he said, his voice part sympathy, part exasperation, and mostly disbelief. "Did you put _any_ sun block on?"

She winced. The movement shifted her angry skin against his fingertips, and although the friction was nearly nonexistent, she winced again.

"Ow," she whispered sheepishly. "Um, my face lotion had some in it, but – "

"Serena!" He was slightly angry with himself as well; he should have noticed her burning yesterday. The fact that he'd worn sunglasses all day and that they hadn't turned any lights on when they finally came back up to the suite after watching the sunset last night didn't excuse him. No wonder she'd had a nightmare last night; she'd probably been feverish from the sunburn.

He huffed out an annoyed sigh again, kneading his forehead with his knuckles. With one hand, he let her shirt back down again, careful lest it touch her skin, and with the other, he reached for her Subspace pocket.

She leaned her forehead against his shoulder, sighing as his fingers began to search through her pocket. "I haven't needed since I became a Senshi. Whenever we went to the beach, a youma always ended up attacking, so any sunburn I got always healed while I was transformed…"

"Hmm…" Darien was only slightly mollified by her explanation. His forehead began to crease as he swept his fingers again through her Subspace pocket, across what felt like a cell phone, granola bars, and bottles of water. Where was it…? The crease between his eyes began to dig deeper.

At last, he paused, his hand still in the pocket. "Odango, when did you last see your brooch?"

Her chin moved against his shoulder as she spoke. "I took it out when I was cleaning out my Subspace pocket so I could put food in it for in case we got plane-wrecked…oh."

Darien sighed.

-

_Presently:_

"If you want me to stop, just say so!"

"No, don't – " She gasped and arched. "_Oh_!"

"Oh my God," Darien muttered, wincing as he looked at the piece of flaky, sun burnt skin that he had just peeled from her back. "Save those words for a different context, please, Odango."

Serena twisted around to scowl at him, then cried out and flinched as the movement pulled at her sunburned skin again. "I can't help it!" she wailed, sounding remarkably like the middle school who had thrown a test paper at him years ago. "You're peeling my skin off!"

"Because you told me to," retorted Darien. He looked at the curls of flaky skin lying in the small garbage can beside him, his stomach – which was unaffected even when he cut into patients with a scalpel for surgery – flip-flopping. "I can't believe I'm doing this… Please, Serena, don't make me do this anymore."

Serena was also looking at the skin in his hand with nausea in her expression, but she swallowed. "Darien Shields, when I was giving birth to your children, drowning in waves of pain, did I say, Darien, please don't make me do this anymore?'"

"We haven't had children yet!" He cut her off as she began to say something. "Rini doesn't count."

She craned her neck around from where she sat on the hotel bed to give him a look that clearly said his argument was irrelevant. "I've seen my future self, and I know just from the fact that she lets _your_ future self wear that ridiculous purple tuxedo that she wouldn't say any such a thing, because she loves you very much and _would do anything for you_!"

Serena stomped her foot repeatedly throughout this last part to give it emphasis. "So you just finish peeling my back so we can go back outside!"

Darien tried one more time. "Serena, sweetheart, I do love you, but you're not supposed to peel sunburned skin – "

"DARIEEEEN!" Serena wailed. "I want to go back out to the beach! I don't wanna stay in here all vacation! Just finish peeling it so I can go outside today without my back looking like I've got skin dandruff, and when we get home, I'll use the crystal to heal it up as good as new!"

This was definitely against Darien's better judgment. He was a _doctor_, for God's sake. But Serena was glaring at him so fiercely that he was afraid _he_ might get sunburn, so he sighed.

"Fine. But next time we go on a trip, we're writing a checklist of things that we need to bring along." Darien began to peel away another piece of Serena's skin. "And the Silver Crystal will be at the top of the list."

-

They went out and spent the day on the beach – although Darien wouldn't let Serena out from under the umbrella. Still, she had fun "accidentally" getting sand in his hair again as she made sand castles in the shade.

"How does your back feel?" he asked he as they trooped up to the room that evening after eating dinner.

"Great!" she said stubbornly, determined not to complain lest he make fun of her again for leaving the silver crystal behind (as he had done already at least twenty times that day).

"Are you sure?" Darien arched a brow. "Because if the skin's still very tender, it would probably be best if you didn't wear anything over it…"

He trailed off.

Serena stopped abruptly in the bedroom doorway and cast him a glance over her shoulder. "You're just full of evil plans this vacation, aren't you?"

Darien just grinned.

And the next morning, they _both_ slept in.

-

-

A/N: It occurred to me that this is the only place ANYWHERE that you will read the line "Darien began to peel away another piece of Serena's skin." (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) Also, please tell me what you think. And remember, if anyone has vignettes ideas they would like to see written, please feel free to send them to eightsword(at)gmail(dot)com.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: A quiet morning drifting wherever in the timeline you want to put it. There's a reference to the 2nd vignette, if you catch it.

I am so proud of this one. I think it's quite innocent, considering the various temptations I resisted in several spots.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

-

Darien is far too concerned with the lawn.

Serena, sitting on the back of his beloved red Mustang (which she keeps teasing him he'll have to get rid of when Rini comes along) and swinging her legs back and forth, shades her eyes to squint up at the ten o'clock sun.

Then she returns her eyes to the sight of his back as he wrestles with a stubborn weed that has somehow wrapped itself around the lawn mower's insides.

Sometimes she thinks that the plants just like to play with him. Why else would the grass grow so quickly and the trees reach their branches to scrap against the windows so often? They long for attention from their planet's prince. She teases him that it's like they enjoy having him clip their toenails.

Serena laughs, amused as always by her little joke – although not so amused, perhaps, as she would have been by the Saturday morning cartoons that she is currently missing. She has not watched any since they got married, except for a few brief snatches that she catches from behind slitted eyelids on mornings when they wake up from having fallen asleep in front of the TV on Friday nights.

She feels embarrassed, sort of, to watch cartoons now. It's not that Darien hasn't known for years that she still watches children's cartoons, but now that she's a _wife_, it's different. It's not that she's afraid he would look down on her for doing it. It's just that it doesn't feel like she should even want to watch cartoons anymore. She feels like she should have more interesting, important things to occupy her mind and her Saturdays, like time should be too precious to spend on anime re-runs.

Darien is cursing now. Serena thinks that she sees the weed wriggle happily further into the lawnmower.

She hops off the Mustang and crunches barefoot across the grass, the soft green blades tickling her toes. She stops behind him, pulling down the brim of her hat.

Darien turns his head from where he is rocked back on his haunches to glance up at her. His face, a golden tan from his numerous Saturday mornings outside, seems almost to glow from beneath a glistening mask of sweat. His eyes squint slightly as he looks up at her.

She leans forward, her shadow falling onto him to shield his eyes from the sun's direct glare.

He smiles a little, wiping his forehead with the back of a sinewy wrist. A smudge of oil is left behind. "Thanks."

"Why are you doing it like this?" she asks the question that she has been wondering for a while now. "You could just, you know…"

She waggles her fingers to mimic the Golden Crystal's magic making everything the way he wants it.

"I think the neighbors would get a little suspicious of our lawn was always perfectly manicured even though no one was ever out here with a mower, don't you?"

Serena waves this off. "You could pretend _that_. But the other stuff – " She gestures at the morning glories he planted last month, at the monstrously large bush of thorny bougainvilleas he'd trimmed last week, at the stubborn weed strangling the lawn mower. "You could deal with all those using the crystal, and no one would know."

He is squinting again, his face creased. She moves back to block the sun again, but his face stays crunched in that thoughtful expression.

"Yeah, but why?" he says. "It's a Saturday morning."

Serena nods. "Exactly! So shouldn't we be…doing something?"

He eyes her for a moment, then drops back to sit Indian-style in the grass, elbows on his dirt-covered knees, smiling. "What'd you have in mind?"

She drops to sit, too, tugging the skirt of her old sundress over her knees. "I don't know. I just feel like…"

His dark blue eyes watch her. "Like there's something we need to be doing?"

"Yes!" she bursts out.

And in the silence that follows, punctuated only by the trills of happy morning birds, she watches him, waiting for his response.

Which comes with a slow smile. "But there isn't."

She blinks. A bird trills again. In the distance, there is the sound of someone honking a horn.

"This is what we fought for, remember?" Darien says, rocking up on his heels to lean forward. A bead of sweat slides fast down his neck over his collarbone to disappear beneath the collar of his damp white t-shirt. "Days like this. Choosing what we want to do when we want to do it."

"But it doesn't feel…" She struggles to find the word. "…right."

"Remember how we talked about getting used to things?"

She cannot help but smile. "Yeah."

He smiles back. "This is one of those things."

Silence wraps around them. It is warm and smells like mown grass with a faint tang of oil.

At last, Darien moves, leaning back with his hands propped on the grass. He regards her with a wry smile that lets her know he is up to mischief.

"Of course, if you _want_ to rush into the future…like, say, by getting started on making Rini, I would be more than willing to spend our Saturday doing that."

Serena smirks back at him and rocks up on her heels. She plants her hands on his knees and leans over him until the brim of her sun hat brushes his forehead.

"That sounds…" Her words fan his eyelashes, tickling his eyelids shut. "Wonderful."

He leans forward.

"But I think I'll take a rain check!"

Darien's eyelids fly back open just in time to see her jump to her feet and brush off her skirt.

"After all, I have some cartoons to catch up on!" She flashes a grin at him and skips back into the house, giggling madly.

Darien stares after her for a moment.

Then he shakes his head, laughing under his breath, and returns to wrestling with the weed in the lawn mower.

"Only Serena," he informs his audience of plants, "would choose cartoons over _that_."

The plants rustle in fervent agreement.

-


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: This one's floating somewhere in the timeline before Rini's born. I thought it would be interesting to see how Sere and Dare's powers would help them out in mundane situations, like homesickness.

Sorry about the long STC wait. Life has really become nothing but exams and projects.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

-

When she, of all the other assistant editors, was chosen to supervise the week-long on-location photo shoot for Eno Miaka's swimwear line, Serena was as excited as a second-grader about to go on her first overnight school trip.

Caught up by the thrill of having been chosen, the stress of making sure all the outfits were packed and transported without damage, and the headaches of dealing with models' agents who had discovered details they didn't like in their clients' contracts, Serena failed to realize one very important thing.

It hit her only as she stood in front of the empty hotel bed and thought that it was very neatly made, but not as neatly as Darien made their bed.

Hair mussed, feet aching from wearing heels all day, ears still popped from the plane flight, and bare toes cold, Serena suddenly felt tears squeezing out of her eyes.

Toes curling against the thin carpet, she slid to her knees, her fingers clenched in the slippery bedspread, her forehead against it. It was smooth and slippery and didn't smell like Darien at all.

Her eyes burned hotter.

She could be mature. She wasn't a baby. She had survived a thousand years without Darien. And then, when Galaxia killed him, she had survived months more without him. It wasn't as though being apart for a measly few days was anything compared to either of those situations. She could do this.

But she didn't want to.

_I wouldn't have come if I'd realized_.

How had she not realized? Why had she let herself get so distracted? She knew why. Because she had been too busy daydreaming about promotions and running around to make sure the outfits were safe and stressing until she hadn't even eaten breakfast this morning because she was afraid that the Chinese model wouldn't show up.

As though these things mattered.

Feathers were already fluttering to life at her shoulder blades as these realizations pushed themselves through her mind. She would go home, right now –

But then her wings stilled and fell, drooping to brush the floor. She couldn't just leave. She had committed to a responsibility. She could just hear what Darien would say if she came home in the middle of her job, without leaving warning, for no reason…

Darien. She tensed. Even if the ramifications of this long trip hadn't occurred to her, they must have occurred to Darien's unfailingly analytical mind.

Would it have occurred to him, too, that she would eventually realize that the photo shoot meant a week away from him and that she would want to come home?

Surely it must have. Serena turned to her suitcase and began to rummage through its folded contents, half-hoping that he had hidden himself inside it, ready to burst out and surprise her when she started crying with homesickness, and hold her and reassure her and promise to take her home right this very minute.

But there was nothing. No thoughtful surprise within it, like the fruit juices he had once hidden in her SubSpace pocket for her to find when she needed them. There were only her clothes, and not even many of them, since she used her Luna Pen and had only packed enough clothes in suitcase to keep anyone who might see her suitcase from getting suspicious.

Serena sank back onto her heels on the carpet. Her heart felt abruptly as cold as her toes.

She felt the worse for having expected and been wrong. Probably Darien was asleep by now. After all, he was strong. He didn't need her to get through a day. He was undoubtedly sure that she was just as strong…

Her fingers, beginning to reach for the rope, fell back to her side before they could touch it.

Something buzzed beside her ear.

Hope leapt in her as she lunged to grab her cell phone.

"Hello?" she blurted out almost before she had it at her ear.

"Hi."

It was stupid, but the sheer relief of realizing that he _had_ thought of her made her burst into tears.

"Serena?" He sounded alarmed, and as helpless as the day he had found out she was Sailor Moon. "Baby, what's wrong? Did something happen?"

"Noth…ing…" she hiccupped. "I…miss you."

She could feel the drain of his tension like a rod-straight spine relaxing. She rested her head against the side of the bed, curling up, waiting for him to say, '_That's all?'_ in his usual reassuring dry way.

But he said instead, in a voice that was quieter than normal, "Me too."

Serena sniffled. She burrowed her head closer against the bedspread, smiling tremulously. She shut her eyes and inhaled more deeply, swiping a hand across her nose. She felt, suddenly, very calmed.

She opened her eyes and looked at the digital clock beside her bed. It was past 2 a.m. "Oh my gosh! Darien, what are you doing up?"

He made a sound like gentle indignation. "I had to tell you good night, didn't I?"

Serena swallowed despite herself, throat thickening. Accusingly, she said, "You didn't pack me anything."

A pause. "I didn't." There was an invisible question mark at the end.

Serena sniffled again. Her eyelids fell shut as she leaned her head against the bed again. "For future reference, when stuff like this happens, you're supposed to write secret notes telling me how much you love me and hide them in my luggage with chocolate kisses."

The other end of the phone was silent.

As the silence stretched into a minute, she realized that the call must have cut off. The hotel concierge had warned her that cell phone reception at the beach was often patchy.

She sighed, not bothering to shut her phone, and kept leaning against it instead, curled up on the floor beside the bed with it pressed to her ear.

It could have been then, or some time later, that she felt a phantom-light brush against her lips.

Her eyelids fluttered partway open, seeking it. "Darien?" she mumbled.

"I'm sorry." His voice was coming from right inside her ear, from the phone. But it also sounded closer, tangible, like something warm pouring into her all the way down to her cold toes.

"Are you there?" Her drowsy eyes floated across the hotel room slowly.

"No." The phantom touch brushed her again, this time across her eyelids. The way he often touched her before she fell asleep. "But you're almost asleep. I can reach you through Elysion."

"Stay?" She stumbled to her feet and crept to the head of the bed. She laid her head on the pillow, phone still held to her ear, without pulling back the covers.

Distantly, as though already in a dream, she felt someone pull them back and over her. "I miss you."

"Miss you too," she mumbled back, eyelids growing heavier.

His arms grew warmer around her the further her eyes closed, until the world was black and his fingers were combing through her hair.

-

When Serena woke up the next morning, the mouthpiece of her cell phone was pressed against her cheek, and the screen was still counting: CALL DURATION: 05:23:12.

Putting it to her ear, she could hear the sound of Darien breathing on the other end.

Serena smiled and pressed the key to end the call.

She could live without Darien. But she didn't have to.

Even when they were far apart.

Her texting skills were meager at best, but she typed a message and sent it to his phone.

Miss you. Have a good day. Love, Odango.

Then she picked up her things to take a shower and get dressed for a new day.

-

It was ten years later, on her first overnight school trip, that Rini Shields crept away from the enthusiastic singing around the campfire.

She wanted her Sailor Moon doll. Even more than that, she wanted to be back at home in her own bed, listening to her little brother trying to sneak out of his room for cookies and to her father typing in the kitchen. She didn't want to be here, where there was only one pillow and it was flat and the ant bites on her toes hurt and nobody else slept with a doll and that boy from Rikada-sensei's class kept trying to put roasted marshmallow in her hair.

Rini hiccupped down tears. She found Sailor Moon Doll in her bag, under her jacket. She hugged her tight, biting her lip hard.

Something made a crumpling sound under her elbow. She looked down.

Taped to Sailor Moon Doll's front bow was a folded origami flower. Two mini Cloud Nine bars peeked out of its center.

Rini, swallowing tears, peeled them away from the flower. The paper unfolded with them.

There was writing on it. Sniffling, she squatted down next to her bag and smoothed it out, Sailor Moon Doll clutched tight under one arm.

_Do you know your mom used to miss home so much when she went on trips that she would call and talk to me all night? It's normal to miss home. Remember you can always come to Elysion if you miss us too much._

_Love, _

_Dad_

Rini's swallowed tears wavered into a tremulous smile. She hugged Sailor Moon doll tight, mashing her forehead against it.

Then she stuffed it back into the bag, put the candy in her pocket, and made her way back to the campfire.

-

-

A/N: I had Darien use the endearment "baby" in this one. I'm not sure if it seems like something he would say…at least not at this point in their relationship…what do you guys think?


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Just something quick fished out of the churning ocean of final exams. Hopefully it can be a little island of serenity to everyone else who's cramming for finals, too.

Speaking of Serenity, please expect STC updates in January. Happy holidays to everyone, and endless thanks to the super-awesome JadeEye!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

-

Her husband may have wolfish tendencies when he transforms with the Golden Crystal, but at other times, he reminds Serena of nothing so much as a cat.

She is lying back on the bed one rainy day after work, luxuriating in the soft pillow beneath her head and the comfiness of her t-shirt and sweatpants after a day in her high heels and tight business skirt, with her favorite manga magazine propped on her stomach, when she hears him pad into the room.

He is wearing sweat pants like her, and even from across the room, she can smell the rain-scented soap that he always showers with after surgeries. She glances up from her magazine to give him a contented smile, and then returns her eyes to it, patting the bed beside her. He has a habit of flopping down on the bed next to her when she's reading and bothering her until she stops, with the excuse that she used to do the same thing to him all the times he was studying for the medical school entrance exams and he's just getting revenge.

But instead of flopping down next to her, Darien stops at the foot of the bed. Then he crawls onto the mattress, nudging her magazine out of the way so that he can settle down with his cheek pillowed on his arm and his arm pillowed on her stomach.

She tenses a little, lifting her comic book above her head to look at him, feeling her stomach muscles shift against him as her arm moves.

He blinks once, lazily, at her, and snuggles back into her stomach. He lifts his head, but only long enough to pull his arms from beneath it. One hand slides up to curl loosely in her hair where it spills from the pillow, and the other slips to the comforter to lie with his thumb against her ribcage just below the curve of her breast. The weight of his head settles back onto her stomach, and his slow, content exhalations warm her skin through the thin fabric of her shirt.

Serena smiles, shifts her comic book to one hand so that she can stroke the other idly through his silky black hair, and keeps reading.

She can't wait for him to wake up so she can see the look on his face when she tells him he was purring.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** I intended to release these vignettes in chronological order, but these two have been ready for a while, and I wanted to get a new Socks vignette up so I could tell you guys that _The Size of Her Socks_ is a contestant in the Best of 2009 Fan Fiction Poll being held at OtakuOnlineStop. Thank you so much to whomever nominated it!

Poll voting is open until January 31, so please vote if you get a chance. I believe you may search "_Xapita_" on ffdotnet's author search engine to find a link to the voting site. Or you can go to the link on the Subject to Change website.

As an aside, this is one of the first vignettes I wrote after the original one. It is set in a not-quite-canon, not-quite-STC, more-a-mixture-of-both timeline.

(Yes, yes, STC is coming.)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Sailor Moon.

-

-

There was never any question of whether or not Darien would be in the delivery room with Serena.

Asanuma and Lita had been running betting pools for month on whether or not he would pass out in the delivery room – three people said he would, five that he wouldn't, and they hadn't let Setsuna give _her_ prediction.

But Darien had never worried that he would faint. He just wasn't the fainting type. In fact, he was as _not_ prone to fainting as he _was_ prone to being brainwashed by slutty alien queens, as Serena had pointed out during one of her most brutal mood swings.

Therefore, the moment of their first child's birth hadn't loomed very large in Darien's mind.

He already knew, after all, that Rini would be born. He knew that she would grow up to be a slightly spoiled, slightly bratty, and frighteningly intelligent little girl with her mother's love for shojo manga.

With all this knowledge already available to him, Darien's mind simply skipped ahead to more interesting things in the timeline.

Like how Serena would finally (he hoped) stop eating that disgusting pickle, ketchup, and ice cream milkshake concoction.

Or like his plans to a) ensure that his daughter didn't grow up to be half as spoiled as the Rini they had met was, and b) keep all the Chaos forces around Earth under control so that the apocalyptic future he and Serena had seen when they fought the Black Moon wouldn't come to exist and force Rini to come to the past in the first place.

Set on this long string of promising future events, the moment of his daughter's delivery was barely even a bead. Darien certainly didn't think it could be the clasp that could snap apart the entire necklace.

But now, as Serena's labor stretched into its thirteenth hour, as her face grew paler and clammier, as the doctors' faces grew graver and the nurses and machinery around her more numerous, a realization began to loom up in front of him. It was as barren and foreboding as his first sight of the devastated Crystal Tokyo had been.

Their baby could die.

Maybe this baby wasn't Rini at all. Maybe it was another daughter, one they didn't know about, who had been miscarried before Rini was born.

Or maybe this baby was Rini, but she was going to die in this complicated labor.

Because the future wasn't set in stone.

How could he have thought it was? Darien felt the blood draining from every inch of his body. How could he have been so naïve as to think that when only a few moments ago he had been planning the ways he was going to change the future?

His heart burned as though someone had taken a piece of sandpaper to it. His daughter, his fiery, tough, but defenseless little girl, floating alone in darkness more impenetrable than space, more lonely than his orphanage room. Never waking up, never even getting the chance to realize that there was a world around her. Never realizing that Darien and Serena had been waiting so eagerly for her.

A fresh terror suddenly immobilized Darien.

What if Serena died, too?

His hand spasmed free of his paralysis to seize Serena's fiercely.

The other scrabbled into his pocket for his cell phone, intent on calling Hotaru and Ami and ordering them both into the room to set up some sort of anti-death barrier around his wife because he was damned if he was going to let her die _now_ –

A weak cry cut through the beeping of the machines.

Darien's eyes snapped to the end of the bed.

The ob-gyn was lifting a bundle.

It had bloody mucus plastered across its body and dark hair that could be Rini's brown locks plastered against its head.

Darien didn't see any of this.

He only saw that it was moving, tiny fingers waving at the air as though to beat the doctor's face away from its own.

Moving.

She was alive.

His rib cage seemed to expand to obese proportions. A strangled sound escaped him.

Then he looked down at Serena, grinning so widely his face felt like it might crack.

Serena's eyes were closed.

Darien's pulse jumped.

Then her eyes opened. They fluttered up to meet his.

"You nearly squeezed my hand off," she accused in a hoarse whisper.

"Sorry," he whispered back. He wasn't quite sure why he was whispering. It was just that suddenly the whole world seemed fragile.

Her eyelids fell shut again. "S'okay…as long as you bring me a milkshake…"

She drifted to sleep before he could fervently promise, with many kisses to her face, that he would bring her a hundred milkshakes.

-

He didn't dare leave her side as she slept. He stayed in his scrubs in the uncomfortable plastic chair bedside her bed, breathing deeply and holding her hand, letting the adrenaline and fear drain slowly from his nerves.

Even when the nurse returned with the baby, now cleaned up and in a fluffy pink blanket, Darien didn't want to wake Serena up. It seemed like the cruelest sin in the universe to take her from her first snatch of sleep in the last twenty hours.

But he knew that _that_ wasn't the cruelest sin in the universe. The cruelest sin in the universe would be to hold the baby before she did. Serena had informed him of this, several times.

So while Nurse Hiashi waited patiently behind him with the baby in her arms, Darien stroked Serena's cheek insistently.

"Come on, Odango," he said gently as she groaned and turned away, burying her face in the pillow. "You know you'll kill me if I get to hold her before you do."

Serena only made an unintelligible sound and nuzzled further into the pillow.

Giving the nurse an apologetic look, Darien cleared his throat and leaned in close to Serena's ear.

"Tsukino-san, if you don't get up, Haruna-san's going to give you another detention!"

Serena bolted up, eyes wide. "I'm up, I'm up!"

Her panicked blue gaze landed on him, then on the nurse standing behind him, holding the baby. Her face creased with confusion…then turned very red.

Her eyes slid back to Darien, who was trying to swallow a grin.

She glowered at him. "Get out of the way so I can hold my baby."

He stepped back obediently. The nurse leaned past him to place the infant into his wife's outstretched arms.

And Serena's face opened up like a night-blooming flower that had just been watered with moonlight.

"Waiii," she breathed, looking at the tiny face. "She's so beautiful."

"She looks a little purple to me." Darien leaned over Serena's shoulder to see the baby better. "Hiashi-san, are you sure that the ID bracelet isn't too tight? It looks like it could be cutting off her circulation."

"Look at you, you little bunny rabbit," cooed Serena, ignoring Darien's worrying. She bent her head forward despite the lower murmurs of pain it sent down her spine and brushed her eyelashes across the impossibly small lips and closed eyes. "Will you wake up for just an itty-bitty minute, sweetheart? Please? Mommy wants to see your beautiful eyes–"

She gasped.

Darien spun away from the nurse, leaping to her side. "What? What is it?"

"She opened her eyes!" Serena's face glowed. "Look, look, watch if she does it again–there!"

The baby's black-lashed lids parted very slowly, like heavy doors pushed ajar by a very weak wind. It was clear that she was still more than half asleep.

Darien had read in his prolific consumption of pregnancy and parenting literature that babies often slept with their eyelids slightly parted. He leaned closer, hand hovering above the baby's little hands, and saw the deep, murky blue irises, almost as though there was a little brown behind the blue to darken their color.

He thought hard of his memories of Rini, trying to discern whether this blue was the same color as her blue eyes.

But then the baby's hand twitched and closed around his smallest finger.

All his careful cataloguing of the baby's features fell out of his mind. His attempts to discern whether or not she was the Rini they had known fell out of his mind.

It didn't matter whether this baby girl was the Rini they had known or not.

She was their daughter.

He and Serena would be the first people she ever loved. The people who taught her how to love. Her first memories would be of them, of laughter and cookies and hugs, not surgeon-masked doctors or tired-faced matrons or smirking youma.

The thought was overwhelming.

"Serena," he murmured.

The weight of her head rested against his shoulder. "Mmm?" was her reply.

It was just a sound, not even a word. But it was so full of rapture that Darien was able to tear his gaze from the tiny fingers around his.

His eyes found Serena's, still fastened upon the baby in her arms. He saw, reflected in her eyes, arcing across them like shooting stars through the sky, all the things that she had in mind for this little girl. The dolls and dresses and stories and peek-a-boo's and butterfly kisses.

He buried his face in his hair. "Have I told you you're amazing?"

She hummed beneath his chin, leaning closer to him.

He turned his cheek against his hair to look at the tiny hand around his again. He watched as Serena reached out to delicately stroke the baby's fingers. As they both watched, the baby's tiny fingers curled open from around Darien's, hanging limply in the air. Then a tiny breeze of air wisped out from between her tiny rosebud lips as she turned, burrowing into Serena's chest the same way Serena had into her own pillow only a few minutes earlier.

Darien laughed. "She's definitely a mini-Serena."

"What, because she snores?" Serena whispered in mock-indignation.

He bumped her head with his nose. "I was going to say because she buries her head in the closest pillow-like object just like you do, but that works, too," he whispered back.

"Oh, so now my chest is a pillow-like object?" She craned her neck back to arch a brow at him.

He leaned down so his nose touched hers. "No, it's two pillow-like objects."

"_You_– " Serena began hotly, but then Rini jerked a little in her arms.

"Don't wake her up," whispered Darien teasingly. "Sheesh, Odango, what kind of mother are you?"

"Don't talk to ME about what kind of a mother I am," she declared in a whisper. "What kind of husband are YOU? You promised to get me a hundred milkshakes, but all I see in front of me is a jerkwad!"

"Well, I figured one of me was as appetizing as a hundred milkshakes."

"OOOH! YOU!"

-

Asanuma, Lita, Motoki, and the rest of the gang arrived in the maternity ward just in time to see a laughing Darien duck out of Serena's room. He sprinted for the elevators, followed by the sound of Serena's angry shrieks.

"Geeze." Motoki shook his head. "You'd think that after becoming parents they wouldn't act like such high schoolers."

"One thing I have observed in all my time as Sailor Pluto," said Setsuna, "is that even though the future changes all the time, the way those two act together never does."

The Senshi and Shittenou looked at each other.

"If THAT's true," said Asanuma with a whistle. "Rini's not gonna be an only child for very long."

-

-


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N**: Not my best. But the idea hit me – can you guess where? – and it was easy enough to type up. It's missing a line that I really want to put in, though. Well, two, if you count this really inappropriate one. Heheheh.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own anything.

-

Early in their marriage, such as when he realized how messy the house was getting, Darien was hesitant to bring up things Serena did that bothered him.

By about three months in, however, a certain sense of security had settled, and so, as he walked into the kitchen one morning, tapping the side of his head to get water out of his ear, he said bluntly, "Serena, your shower spray nearly gouged my eyes out."

Where she was leaning over the counter with the newspaper comics spread out over the toaster–he'd_ told_ her not to do that, she was going to start a fire one of these days, and just because he could immediately summon water to put it out, he didn't want to lose the ten years he was sure it would scare off his life–Serena giggled a little.

"That would make the news," she said. "'Man blinded twice in one lifetime!' You'd make the Guinness Book of World Records."

"I'm already in there," Darien grumbled, twitching her newspaper off of the hot toaster as he moved to the coffee maker and poured some of the coffee she'd started for him. "Under 'man with cruelest wife.'"

"A-HEM, remember who made that coffee for you, mister," Serena began hotly. But then her strudels popped out of the toaster, distracting her.

A little bemusedly, he watched her bite right into one of them despite the fact that it was so hot that a bit of steam was curling up from it. The heat didn't appear to faze her at all; with one strudel held between her teeth, she put the other on a plate and took it to the table, where she drizzled it with icing and then maple syrup.

His stomach rolled slightly, and he turned back to the counter, opening one of the cabinets. "I'm serious, you know. Do you have to set the spray at such a high pressure?"

"It's NOT high." Serena swiveled around in her chair, still chewing, a strudel in her hand. She swallowed. "It's just that you're used to using a TRICKLE. I don't see how you even manage to get your hair clean."

"I don't see how you manage not to go bald, with how strong you always have it on," he retorted, pulling a bagel from the cabinet and putting it in the toaster. He turned around, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, and had to hide a smile at the deeply baleful look she was giving him from above her strudel.

Behind him, the bagels popped out of the toaster. He put them on a plate, grabbed some orange marmalade, and slid into the chair across from Serena.

"You know," she began as he scraped a thin layer of marmalade onto the bagels. "If we're going to start complaining about bathroom habits, I could point out how you never put the seat back down."

Darien's marmalade-scraping did not falter. His propriety-obsessed conscience was completely clear. "Yes, I do."

Serena made a face. "I know you do," she grumbled. And for some reason, she was glaring at him more balefully than ever – "It's not fair!"

Darien blinked at her sudden outburst.

Serena threw herself against the back of her chair, making a frustrated sound. "Why can't you ever do anything WRONG?"

Darien set down his knife and took a bite from his bagel, watching curiously to see how this tantrum would turn out.

"It's not like I'm asking for a lot!" she ranted. "Just one little thing! So that next time I'm with the girls and they're all complaining about their husbands, I can join in a say, I KNOW, Darien's ALWAYS doing that, it's so ANNOYING!"

She stopped, pink-cheeked and panting with her effort, and looked at him.

He looked back, fighting back a smile. "That's really what you want?"

Serena nodded vigorously.

"Okay." Darien leaned back in his chair, wiping his sticky fingertips on a napkin. "Then from now on, I will be a textbook example of a bad husband." He counted off on his fingers. "I'll snore, drink milk from the carton, leave my clothes everywhere, eat things without cleaning up…"

He trailed off as their eyes met in slow realization.

"Uh," he said as her eyes narrowed at him. "I didn't mean to make it sound just like you."

But instead of yelling at him like he had expected, Serena just deflated with a huge sigh. "I really am a bad wife, aren't I?"

He couldn't resist. "Considering the context, I think it means you're a bad husband."

_Now_ she scowled at him. "I was being serious."

He leaned across the table to thumb a bit of icing from her nose. "Odango, the only thing serious about you saying you're a bad wife is how seriously wrong it is."

Serena bit her lip against a smile and, to his faint surprise and less faint pleasure, broke into a little blush.

"Oh, fine," she mumbled. "I'm sorry about the shower. I'll try harder to remember to turn it back."

Her contrition made him feel equally apologetic. "No, I shouldn't have complained. I should check before I turn it on."

They looked at each other. Then they laughed. Serena came around the table and sat on his lap, putting her arms around her neck and resting her head under his chin. He kissed the top of her head and rubbed his thumb in lazy circles across the bottom of her ribs through her silky blouse.

"I'll ask the girls," said Serena after a few minutes. "I'm sure one of them has run into this problem before. Probably Rei and Numa."

"You do that," said Darien, not keen on the idea of other people knowing about his shower habits but also knowing that, nine times out of ten, Serena made plans to talk to her friends about something and completely forgot.

Serena beamed and gave him a sticky kiss on the lips, then spotted the clock, gasped, "I'm late!" and shot out of his lap for the front door.

-

By that night, the showering matter had completely slipped Darien's mind. It had been Serena's turn to cook that night, which always meant that the dishes needed a little more scrubbing than usual to get all the unidentified, charcoal-like substances off of them. Serena, wiping the dishes dry beside him, had responded to his gibes about her cooking a little more slowly than usual, which made him think she was probably tired, or maybe worried about the big winter shoot that was coming up.

She surprised him, therefore, when she turned from putting the last dish away, and said casually, "I talked to Mina today."

Darien made a noncommittal hum, his arms covered up to the elbows with soap suds as he drained the sink. "That's nice. Did you talk about anything interesting."

"She said that we should just shower together."

The sink gurgled as the last of the water choked past a few stray noodles. Darien sputtered as he choked on air.

"She said you should – you and _her_?" What the hell was Mina thinking, he'd thought Haruka was the only one of the Senshi he had to worry about having designs on Serena –

"Not me and _her_." Serena rolled her eyes. "Me and _you_."

Darien stopped choking. Water dripped down his finger, _plunk, plunk, plunk_ into the sink. He looked at Serena.

She looked back. For a minute, there was silence.

"It doesn't really make sense…" she began.

"No sense at all," agreed Darien.

There was another silence as they looked at each other.

"I'll get some towels," said Darien.

"I'll get the hot water started," said Serena.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** I think I took the easy way out of this vignette. It was originally going to be very different and I meant to post it before the "Future" vignette but at that point, I didn't know if I would ever be able to finish this one.

I've taken some liberties with the timeline and incorporated (vaguely and briefly) events from the manga, movies, _and_ anime. So it's not necessarily STC-ish in terms of their powers or backgrounds the way most of the vignettes have been.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything.

L

It is a Tuesday, which means it is Darien's turn to cook.

But he is late by half an hour. Serena studies the clock, wondering if she ought just to go ahead and start making dinner herself.

The problem is that she has been craving fried fish all day, ever since the ocean-themed photo shoot from hell ran over its time slot by two hours. Serena can't fry fish to save her life; they always came out blackened and dripping with grease as though they have just flopped out of an oily ocean. Darien, however, has a knack of getting them golden-brown on the outside and snow-white inside and perfectly, perfectly dry.

Just thinking about it makes her stomach gurgle with longing.

She resolves to give him fifteen more minutes. Flopping down across the loveseat, she dangles her socked feet in front of her as the opening montage of that show about promiscuous housewives fills the TV screen.

A commercial break later, she hears a key scraping in the lock. She cranes her neck to peer toward the door, a smile on her face. There will be fish tonight after all!

But as the door slides open, she sees that Darien is still wearing his scrubs. He almost never does this; he always likes to change back into his normal clothing before coming home. Furthermore, his black hair has the disheveled look it often gets after he has repeatedly run his hands through it.

Serena slides off the loveseat.

"Bad?" she asks.

"Yeah." His voice is tired. He slouches onto the arm of the armchair, rubbing his forehead. His hair falls over his eyes in a way that makes him look much younger, like the child Darien that she never knew.

She waits for him to talk.

"We didn't get a patient to OR fast enough," Darien says at last. "He's in a coma on life support."

Serena winces. After Darien began working in trauma surgery a year ago, she had begun to see a trend. She can always tell when he has lost a patient: tension stiffens the skin around his eyes. But in cases like this one, when the patients slide into comas or paralyses or vegetative states, seem to affect him more deeply, putting a tremble in his fingers.

She wonders sometimes if this is an empathetic response. If he projects his own experiences of being brainwashed, controlled, trapped inside his own mind, onto what he sees happen to his patients.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. She encloses his hand, still slightly chalky from the latex gloves he must have worn during the surgery, in both of hers. She feels so bad now for waiting for him to make dinner. He has had a rough day, and there isn't anything on the table waiting for him.

She lets go of his hand. "I'll go make – "

"No." He catches her wrist with the same hand she had grasped and pulls himself to his feet. "It's my turn, right? Just let me change."

L

The fish are done, though they don't taste as good to Serena when she feels so bad, and she is serving the salad, when Darien stops abruptly in the middle of sitting down.

"Oh," he says and reaches into his Subspace pocket for his wallet. "I forgot."

He pulls a folded-up white card from his wallet and pushes it across the table to her. "From Dr. Enoto." He frowns, picking up his fork. "Or his wife, I guess."

Serena examines the gold script swirling across the card. It looks more like an invitation to a wedding than an invitation to an afternoon of golf and conversation at the country club, which is what it is. She says as much to Darien.

A smile touches the corner of his lips. "From what I've heard, Dr. Enoto's wife has what can charitably be called dramatic flair."

Serena looks down at the card again. "Which is why she calls us the newest members of the 'Surgeon Society?'"

He looks at her. The smile on his lips is broadening to a grin. "You're impressed by the alliteration, admit it."

"Of course not!" she scoffs, although that was exactly what she was thinking. If someone is going to be eccentric enough to make up a name for their group of acquaintances, it might as well be memorable and fun to say.

"I thought so," says Darien, spearing a cherry tomato straight from the salad bowl on his fork.

Serena spears her own tomato and swirls it in ranch dressing. "Who all is it made of, this Surgeon Society?"

"Let's see." Darien stops cutting his fish into neat pieces and begins ticking off on his fingers. "There's Dr. Enoto, who's the head trauma surgeon, and his wife. I think they must have been together before Serenity and Endymion even met, they're so old. Then there's Dr. Kitamura, who specializes in cardiothoracic surgery. I know he has a wife, but that's about it. Dr. Sawara does maxillofacial, Dr. Goh does GI, and Dr. Nakahara is a neurosurgeon."

"Wow," says Serena, blinking. "I didn't realize there were so many surgeons working with you. You've never talked about them."

"There's not much time to socialize," Darien says dryly. "The imminent deaths get in the way, you see."

Serena kicks him under the table. "It seems like the OTHER doctors find time to socialize enough, if they have their own society."

"It seems more like their _wives_ all know each other and arrange these little get-togethers," Darien says, waving his fork carelessly.

Then he grins and leans forward conspiratorially. "Although from what I've seen of these doctors, play dates arranged by their wives are probably their _only_ form of socialization."

Serena points her fork at him teasingly. "Like you're one to make fun of people for being socially awkward."

His grin curves into a smirk. "I'll have you know that if I hadn't spent all my free time in a tux chasing around a certain klutzy Senshi, my social calendar would have been booked solid."

Relieved that he seems to be out of his funk, Serena directs a pointed glance at one of the framed pictures sitting on top of the stereo. It depicts them posing at the park, her in her high school uniform and him in the dreadful olive-colored jacket he used to wear. "Your wardrobe choices say otherwise."

Darien laughs and pulls the invitation back toward him with his fork. He reaches to toss it in the garbage can.

"Hey, wait! I didn't say we shouldn't go!"

His dark blue eyes glance up at her, his forehead creased. "Why would we?"

"They're the guys you WORK with. Knowing the people you work with is always a good thing." She winks. "Besides, if they're such nerds, you should get along with them pretty well, right?"

L

On the day after their dinner conversation comes the first time that Darien forgets something at home and needs Serena to drop it off at the hospital for him.

He is usually quite diligent and seems embarrassed by his slip-up. He swears that he wouldn't call her and ask her to do it except that it's his badge, which he needs in order to access the surgical equipment to prep for a surgery scheduled for twenty-five minutes from now, and he doesn't have time to get home and back –

A laughing Serena cuts off his ramblings, assuring him that it's okay and she'll be there in fifteen minutes. Her boss owes her for that over-time photo shoot the other day anyway.

As she hangs up the phone, adoration for Darien fills her from her fingertips to her toes, loving that he considers her job to be important enough that he doesn't just automatically assume that she is able to run back and get his badge. Strange as it is, she loves that he feels so upset about interfering with her schedule. Although at least half of that upsetness, she is sure, comes from his own aggravation with himself for being forgetful. For all that he insists it isn't true when she calls him a perfectionist, she knows it's true: he is, after all, a Leo.

Twelve minutes later, she trots into the ER triage room in her work heels, rummaging for Darien's badge in the designer bag that the Luna Pen gave her that morning.

Sick people are slumped in seats all around the triage lobby. Red-faced, white-faced, green-faced. Coughing, panting for breath, retching.

She cannot stand it, and she knows that Darien would give her a smack upside the ego for risking a drain of all her power. But she touches a hand to the brooch in her bag and sends a wave of energy billowing like faintly glittering dust across the room.

Immediately, the room becomes quieter, calmer. The old woman in the wheelchair begins to breathe more easily. The fevered little boy in his mother's lap stops whimpering with a little sigh and drifts peacefully to sleep.

Serena smiles brightly at the old woman and trips, her distraction and sudden drain of energy making her a little unsteady on the ridiculously high Luna Pen heels. She stumbles to a stop in front of the triage nurse's desk.

"Excuse me," she says.

"There's a line," the tired-looking nurse says.

"I'm very sorry," Serena says, ducking a quick bow to the old man leaning on a cane just behind her. He is too distracted, looking with wonder at his suddenly steady legs, to notice her. "I just need to drop something off for my husband. He's a trauma surgeon here."

The nurse gives her a double-take, eyebrows digging into her eyes. Some emotion, one that Serena knows is familiar but cannot quite place, filters into them. "Dr. Enoto?"

Serena's eyes widen, a little. But the nurse looks very tired; maybe her vision is a little blurry. That would explain why she thinks Serena is old enough to be the elderly Dr. Enoto's wife.

"No," Serena says. "Dr. Shields."

"Dr. _Shields_?" repeats the nurse. Her eyes widen instead of narrow.

But Serena does not notice, for she is too distracted by two things.

First, by how very funny it feels to be calling her husband 'Dr. Shields.'

Second, by the sight, at that very moment, of one of the automatic doors with the warnings on it swinging open behind the nurse's desk and Darien striding out of them, his white doctor's coat flaring out behind him.

Serena has always found this coat of his rather attractive, possibly even more so than his Tuxedo Mask cape, and she grins at him.

"Serena!" He sounds relieved, which makes her think that he must have been too distracted to notice her slight use of power, which makes _her_ relieved.

Then shocked, because he plants a kiss on her lips. He is not usually one for such behavior in public.

"You're a lifesaver," he tells her in a low voice as he presses his forehead to hers for one swift second.

"Which flavor?" Serena teases, clipping his badge to his white lapel. As he pulls away with a laugh, she gives his collar a tug. "Kick surgery butt!"

He flashes her one wry look, and a dry "I hardly think the patient would appreciate that," before he disappears, as quickly as he appeared, back behind the warning-plastered doors.

Serena is left standing in front of the triage nurse, who wears an expression like disbelief.

Serena beams at her. "Thank you!"

Her cell phone rings, then, and as she gives the old man behind her another smile and steps away, toward the door, she answers it. "Hello?"

It is the photographer of that day's shoot. "Tsukino-san, I'm looking at the schedule. It says Rumiko's going to be wearing the Chanel gown?"

"The Chanel?" Serena's brow knits. "No, not the Chanel, I got that one yesterday. I want the Yves Saint Laurent ensemble."

"What? The debutante?"

"The_ Saint Laurent_," Serena repeats, more loudly. "I got the Chanel yesterday."

Wincing at her own volume, she shoots an apologetic look at the patients.

She catches, then, the eye of the triage nurse. The woman is staring at her, her face set in a hard mask of disapproval, and Serena grimaces. She has forgotten that one isn't supposed to use cell phones in a hospital.

The photographer hears her this time, though. He thanks her and hangs up, and Serena gets to work and finishes the shoot, and by the end of that day, Serena has forgotten all about that morning.

L

A few days after her visit to the hospital, she sits at a table with the rest of the Surgeon Society wives on a veranda that overlooks the golf course where their husbands are playing.

Serena would have liked to watch, since she has never seen Darien play golf and honestly, she cannot quite imagine him swinging him a golf club and yelling "Fore!" but she has been placed by Dr. Enoto's wife, who seems to be the leader of the group, at the end of the table furthest from the veranda railing.

"Mine is too big to wear every day." Nakahara-san, who implored Serena to call her Naoko, stretches out her hand to show the rest of them the ring on her fourth finger. "I had Ichiro buy me a smaller one to wear every day."

Serena cannot fail to notice that the "smaller one" still has three fat red rubies glinting on its silver band.

"I did the same thing," says Dr. Sawara's wife, who did not invite Serena to call her Brittany. Her features are sharp and prominent, Western; she is the closest to Serena in age and the only one at the table besides Serena whose blonde hair could possibly be natural. Neither of these similarities, though, seem to have made her feel any sort of kinship with Serena.

Sawara-san flashes her fingers the same way that Rei does when she flings out five ofuda at a time. A platinum wedding band encrusted with diamonds glitters on her ring finger.

"And you, Serena dear?'

Serena looks up from her raspberry lemonade so abruptly that some sloshes out of her glass. "Um…?"

Enoto Saena, the oldest of the group although her nearly wrinkle-less face and carefully frosted dark blondish hair make her look much younger than Darien's description of her and Dr. Enoto had made Serena expect, smiles at her. "Might we see your wedding ring, Serena dear?"

Serena's fingers curve reflexively around the delicate ring on her fourth finger. It is the same one that Darien gave her at the airport years ago.

After the battle with Galaxia, he had tried to give her an engagement ring, and then a wedding ring, but she hadn't wanted them. She didn't want sparkling jewels that would remind her of Galaxia's golden bracelets to replace the warm, worn golden heart that her fingers had traced so many times as she wondered and wished and waited for him. Nothing could be more precious to her than the ring that had hugged her finger as she gripped the sword to fight Galaxia, the only object that had remained on her body when everything but her wings disappeared.

Eventually Darien had given in to her refusals of a new ring. His only stipulation had been that Serena would give the ring to him for a fresh coat of gold to be applied to the heart before he returned it to her finger on their wedding day.

"Methinks she's being modest," says Risa Kitamura, smiling at Serena. Her nails are lacquered red, loosely holding a margarita that drips condensation onto the designer purse in her lap. "Darien's been quite the success, after all. Come, Serena darling, let's see it."

Serena is flushing now, but she knows there is no way to avoid it. From long acquaintance with Lita and Mina, she can recognize when curiosity can be evaded and when it cannot.

She lifts her hand from beneath the white tablecloth and holds it up, willing her fingers not to tremble.

A collective silence grips the table as they all blink well-mascaraed eyes.

"Well," says Risa. Her disappointment is little disguised, or maybe that is the sound of surprise mingling with superior satisfaction.

Brittany Sawara makes a sound rather like a snort.

Serena flushes darker. "Darien gave it to me in high school," she begins. Then she stops abruptly, ashamed of herself for trying to defend her ring to those women.

"So you knew each other before university?" Naoko leans forward curiously.

"Um – yes," Serena says, uncertain where this is going.

"Oh, my, you sneaky girl! You must be pretty creative to have kept him this long!" Laughing delightedly, Naoko winks at her, and Risa joins in. "I imagine he knew then that he wanted to be a doctor?"

"They always do," Risa says as Serena nods. "These single-minded doctor men. So you've been together all this time?"

Serena nods again, taking a sip of her lemonade to try to head them off from asking her any more questions.

Her attempt is in vain.

"How interesting!" Naoko exclaims. "I thought the two of you only got married a few months ago!"

"In June," Serena says.

"Brave girl," says Saena, and her eyes, too, seem wide with surprise. "Waiting until after his residency to marry him… I'm quite sure I shouldn't have had the courage."

"Me neither! What if he had changed his mind once he was licensed?" Naoko shivers as though cold beneath her filmy blouse. "I made Ichiro marry me before he went to med school. I worked to put him through it because I was afraid once he was making money he'd realize he could have anyone he wanted and forget about me."

"Indeed," murmurs Saena.

Brittany Sawara raises her shaped eyebrows and deigns to join their conversation for the first time. "It doesn't always make a difference. Chiharu worked to put Tsuna through grad school, but he's divorcing her for that Keio resident at Tokyo General."

A rippled of disgusted noises go around the table.

"Fool," says Saena. The venom in her voice surprises Serena. "It'll never work. These doctor men go through phases where they think they want the intellectual type. Tsuna will be in for a nice surprise when he realizes that what he wants when he comes home from a frustrating day at work isn't stimulating conversation, it's a good stimulating lay."

Tittering laughter erupts from the women. Serena tries to smile, can't, and takes a sip of her lemonade instead. Her eyes, shifting so that they wouldn't meet any of the other wives', meet a waiter's gaze a few tables away. Although she has never seen him before, he looks familiar.

Suddenly she realizes why. His face wears the same expression that the triage nurse a few days ago did. A tint of pity overshadowed by contempt.

She had realized almost from the first moment of her introduction with these women that they are self-concerned, lazy, and, for lack of a better word, gold-diggers.

But only now does she realize that the world must see her as one of them.

L

By the time the men return, Serena has chewed her straw into two tongues of plastic. When she sees them coming up the stairs to the veranda, she begins laughing with the other women, even though she does not know what they are discussing, so that Darien won't think anything is wrong.

"Oh, stay back, Ichiro, you're all sweaty!" Naoko leans away from Dr. Nakahara as he leans in to kiss her cheek. He has gray in his hair and looks flabby and coarsely dark next to his flawlessly-complexioned wife, like a peasant leaning over a geisha.

Serena looks up at her own husband, careful to maintain a bright smile. He looks more out of place among the doctors than she does among the wives with their slender figures and blond hair (dyed or otherwise). Dark-haired among their white and graying heads, lean among their rounded stomachs, Darien barely even has a glistening forehead, while the other surgeons are wet with sweat.

The other women have noticed this, if their surreptitious glances are any indication. She wonders if they are thinking about the sorts of things she must have done to nab a husband who is not only high-earning but good-looking, and she feels her stomach twist again.

The nausea makes her more determined to act normal. She leans back, taking in his unrumpled appearance, and murmurs to him, "What did you do, just sit back and watch them play?"

"I might as well have been," he murmurs back. "We've fought slug youma that move faster than these guys."

Serena smiles. But that upset-stomach feeling, the feeling with which the waiter's contemptuous glance and the other women's sly teasing has filled her, does not leave.

If anything, it worms deeper.

"Well?" Saena's voice rises over everyone else's, commanding their attention. She is tracing her manicured nails in faint circles on her white-haired husband's arm. "Is it time for us to order lunch?"

"We thought a bit of tennis might be in order first," says her husband. He looks over at Serena, smiling. "After all, Mrs. Shields is dressed for it!"

Serena blushes, then blanches. The blush is because she is the only one of the women dressed in an athletic skort and top instead of a ruffly sundress, for she had expected that they would be playing golf, too, not sitting and talking the whole time. The blanche is because she has never been a fan of tennis since the time one of Nephrite's youma turned her into a human tennis ball.

"I think probably we'd better not," says Darien. His hand rests lightly on her shoulder, his thumb brushing the back of her neck. "We don't have the best memories of tennis. What about Frisbee?"

"Frisbee?" says Dr. Sawara wonderingly. The most uncertain-looking of the surgeons, and the youngest after Darien, he hovers above Brittany looking almost as though he is afraid to come close lest he deprive her of a single ray of sunlight. "I haven't played Frisbee since… I can't even remember when."

"That's a lot of running, isn't it?" Dr. Kitamura pulls at his sweaty shirt.

"I think Serena would rather sit here in the shade with us," says Saena. "You men just go have fun."

"Serena's great at Frisbee," Darien says. "You could say she blows away the competition." He winks at her.

Serena musters a smile in return.

They head back down the stairs, Serena accompanying this time, to play Frisbee in the well-manicured lawn adjacent to the golf course.

But the game does not last long. The surgeons peel off even more quickly than Darien had predicted to Serena in a whisper that they would. Panting and sweaty, they retreat to the shade of the veranda.

Wondering if they should follow, Serena glances at them when the last straggler, Dr. Sawara, bids them adieu. But Darien, yards away, shakes his head.

She aims the Frisbee again.

It is an absolutely beautiful throw. Had Darien been a youma and the Frisbee her tiara, it would have bisected him.

But a wind gusts out of nowhere, flinging the plastic discus toward the trees.

Then she sees a tree branch that seems actually to snatch out, catch the Frisbee in its leaves.

Hands on her hips, she directs an accusing look at Darien.

He only smiles and beckons at her to follow him as he heads beneath the tree for the Frisbee.

Underneath the branches' shade, the grass is dappled with light. Serena blinks, pushing her sweaty bangs from her forehead as she lets her eyes adjust to the sun's glare.

Darien stands beside the tree's trunk. He is watching her with a wary, concerned expression, as though she has been brainwashed by the Negaverse and he is waiting to see what she will do.

When she is quiet and only watches him back, he speaks.

"I'm really too mature to be saying this," he says, "but as usual, you have a way of bringing out the five-year-old in me, so I'm going to say it. I told you so."

She wraps her arms around her churning stomach. "Told me what?"

"That we shouldn't have come to this." He takes a step toward her. The Frisbee in the tree branches above him casts a faint vague reddish shadow on the ground that bounces as a breeze shakes the branches. It flickers across his face.

"What, because it's boring?" She smiles, trying to make light of it.

He smiles back, uncertainly. "That too." The red shadow crosses his face again. "What happened?"

She clasps her hands behind her back. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Your straw was chewed in half. I know what that means, Odango."

"That I'm hungry?"

He moves toward her to close the distance between them but stops a step away. "You really don't want to talk about it?"

"I really don't," she says stubbornly.

Because what is there to talk about? That people think she married him because he's rich, and he married her because she's pretty, and neither of them could possibly _love_ the other? She doesn't need to tell him because she already knows what he would say if she did tell him. _You and I both know that's not true, and the people we love know it's not true, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks._

It's true. It shouldn't matter what anyone else thinks.

Except it does.

She feels _so_… She doesn't know what, exactly. Just that the feeling is so strong that her lips and fists are trembling with it. She has fought half of her life, spent half of her life killing and being killed and neglecting her homework and her family and crying herself to sleep. Done all that, for this? To be smirked at, and looked down on, and seen as a – a –

Darien has his hands on her shoulders. They are tightening, his lips are coming down to brush her ear, and abruptly she is blurting out, "They all think I'm some trophy wife who only married you for your money!"

Darien jerks away. Serena stares at her shoes, trying to glare, but her eyes too full of tears to manage it. Humiliation has joined the anger. Why did she say that?

"I'm being stupid," she says thickly and quickly. She swipes a hand across her eyes, trying to calm herself down. It shouldn't be hard – after all, she has faced youma and corpses and death with more composure than this – but it is. She had though that after Chaos's last vestiges faded, it would be easy and painless to settle into a normal life, but hurt lurks in normalcy, too. The hurts aren't big enough to kill her, but they are enough to sting and humiliate, and those are feelings that she has not felt since her earliest days as Sailor Moon, before there were worries about death and torture and the end of the world to numb her to them.

"Stupid," she mumbles at herself again, staring at her shoelaces.

Darien's shadow falls over them. "You're not being stupid."

Serena looks up at him. She feels her face trying to muster a smile, to look as though she is brushing off her embarrassing outburst.

But Darien's hand goes to her face, cupping her jaw. His thumb goes to her lips, smoothing the false smile away. "You're never stupid."

Serena turns her face, away from his hand, before the hot tears from her eyes can trickle onto his fingers. She forces a joking tone. "I'll remind you that you said that the next time I wash your white coat with my red socks."

"Like you ever do laundry." His sarcasm comforts her even more than the hand he reaches out to pull her face back up, both of them cupped around her jaw now, forcing her eyes to meet his. "Serena. You are not like those women."

"I'm just so…mad," she breathes out, her teeth coming down on her lip. Her hands come up and grip his wrists, not hard, but tightly. "How can they… how can… I _love_ you."

Darien strokes his thumbs down the sides of her face. "I know."

Serena closes her eyes and inhales, her skin brushing against his palms. She lets the understanding she senses from him through the rope settle over her and calm her like a serene blanket of snow.

After a minute, she opens her eyes. "_I know?_ What kind of unromantic answer is that?"

There is a limpness to his gentle smile, but he laughs. "You don't recognize a Han Solo quote when you hear it? That's it, we're going home right now and watching Star Wars."

Serena grabs his wrists again. The idea of getting away from this place, and the Surgeon Society wives, is like the promise of ice cream at the end of a doctor's appointment. "Can we?"

He grins at her as though he can tell that she is thinking about food. "Of course. Let's get out of here."

They tramp back up to the club's veranda, where the doctors and their wives are conversing over the clinks of the ice in their glasses.

"There you are!" says Saena when she sees them. "The rest of us have already ordered, we'll call the waiter back for you." She lifted her hand to motion for him.

"No, that's fine," says Darien. "Thank you, but we're going to head out."

"What?" Saena's eyes flick from him to Serena. "Why?"

Serena opens her mouth to say that she isn't feeling well, but Darien beats her to it.

"Serena just got a call from one of her editors," he says. "They need her for an emergency photo shoot." He glances at her as though urging her to play along. "We hate to leave early, but I'm sure everyone here understands how it is to be on call."

Dr. Enoto and Dr. Nakahara chuckle.

"We do," says Dr. Sawara with a tentative smile. "Good luck, Serena."

Serena smiles warmly at him, bows politely to everyone else at the table, and heads toward the exit with Darien.

"You're such a liar," she murmurs out of the corner of her mouth as the hostess bids them goodbye.

"Yes, but did you see the looks on their faces?" he mutters back.

Heat radiates from the asphalt as they walk across the parking lot toward the car. Serena squints against the bright sunlight, feeling tremendously lighter than she had in the cool shade of the veranda. She even begins to skip as the red Mustang comes into view, wondering if she could trick Darien into frying fish even though it is her turn to cook that night.

"You know," comes Darien's voice, light and conversational, from behind her, "you're not the only one who's had to deal with being a trophy wife. Remember all the super villains who came after me because I was your good-looking boy-toy?"

Serena's good mood dissipates into guilt and horror. For the first time she sees their adolescence as it must look through his eyes, not just as a teenager repeatedly forced to fight ugly monsters, but as one repeatedly kidnapped and brainwashed and imprisoned and killed, all because a super-being was trying to get to _her_.

He reads her thoughts through the horror traveling across her face. But he does not mirror her expression. He is grinning a little instead. He elbows her and says, "So now you know how I felt all those years, hmm? To everyone else in the universe, I'm just _your_ trophy wife.

Serena stares at him, huge-eyed, lower lip trembling. How can he joke about this?

"Don't give me that face," Darien says, putting his arm back around her shoulders and squeezing him to her. "We're fine now. Dr. Sawara's wife may be a little worse than Queen Beryl, but she's not as bad as Nehelenia, and we handled her fine."

"This isn't…" Serena sputters. "It's not funny!" But it is, a little. Swallowing the giggle tickling her throat, she allows herself to be pulled closer.

"Look, Odango." He talks against her temple, tickling her ear. "I'm speaking from experience. Realizing what other people think about you…you can't worry about it. You've just got to let it go."

Her husband lets out a warm laugh that sends shivers radiating from where his warm breath hits her temple and nudges her with his cheek. "And if I can do it, you definitely can. It's a lot harder for me than it is for you. I'm a Leo, and we're very proud creatures."

Slowly, Serena cranes her head back to look up at him. Her eyes are very wide. Darien tenses a little, as though prepared for her to burst into tears, but instead, a delighted grin splits her face. "Ha! You DO believe in astrology!"

Darien sets off across the asphalt. "In basic zodiac signs, maybe. But not in those daily horoscopes of yours."

"Why not?" she demands, tripping after him. "They're always right!"

Darien smirks over his shoulder at her. "Give me one example."

Serena grins mischievously back as she catches up to him, and his hands catches her, automatically entwining their fingers. "Well, mine today said that somebody would be making me fried fish for dinner."

"Did it now," he drawls.

"Ye-e-s," she draws out, blinking up at him in the sunlight.

He stares at her for a moment, his smirk becoming a warm smile. He lifts a hand to her cheek, stroking back a tendril of hair.

"Fine," he says affectionately. "I imagine you'll want me to make some sort of dessert, too?"

Serena's face lights up with delight all over again. "Yes!" She seizes his arm and hugs it to her as they walk, chattering about how they don't have batter or cake mix, so they'll need to stop at the store on the way home, and oh, Darien?

"Hmm?" he says absently. He has been paying less attention to her actual words than to the happy tone of her voice, so different from the taut emotion that strained it before.

Looking up at him with her serious blue eyes, she says, "You're not a trophy wife."

He smiles down at her before tilting his head to put his cheek against her hair. "Thanks."

"You're a housewife."

There is a pause. Then the sound of a growl rumbling up through Darien's chest. "Odango…"

Giggling madly, Serena takes off for the car.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N**: Because Darien's a Leo. Also because he's such a little kid underneath all that gruff sophistication. Also because I needed to give you guys a slightly happy breather between the last vignette and the one coming up. Not to mention STC…

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

L

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Explain one thing to me, Odango."

Serena, propped up on her elbow next to the tiny baby on the bed, made a humming sound of acknowledgement but didn't look up from Rini's sleeping face, which she was tracing with adoring fingertips.

From where he stood at the foot of the bed, a few feet away from the empty bassinet, Darien sighed. "Why did we spend six hours at four different furniture stores to find the perfect bassinet if we're not going to use it?"

Serena was still humming softly, now brushing her fingertips over Rini's soft hair. It had been a week since they brought her home from the hospital, and Serena still seemed as entranced by her as she had the first time she held her in the hospital bed. For Darien, however, a little of the shine of a new baby had worn off. He had discovered that having Rini meant having to share his wife…and his bed. He wasn't sure which one bothered him more.

Carefully, so as not to wake the baby, he sank onto the bed next to Serena's bare feet. "Serena."

Her soft blue eyes glanced up at him, and she extended her leg to nudge him with her toes. The sight of her ankles, which had been so recently swollen and pink and were now back to being pale and slender, still filled him with amazement…and a few other things.

"Hold your horses, Dare-Bear," she said teasingly. "We'll use it, just not yet. Not yet," she said again in a soft baby voice, her eyes going back to Rini and her face lowering to nuzzle the baby's cheek with her nose. "How can you look at this pretty little face and think she's big enough to sleep on her own? She needs to stay with Mommy still, don't you, baby girl?"

Darien sighed. Serena must have stopped smothering Rini with love for long enough to hear it, for she looked up and nudged him with her foot again. "Come on, get in," she said, nodding her head over her shoulder to his side of the bed. "You've got to be up early tomorrow."

He looked at his side of the bed. Though he didn't realize it, there was a pout beginning to stiffen his lips as he looked at the veritable barricade of pillows that Serena had constructed to separate his side from hers. So that he wouldn't roll over in the night and accidentally squish Rini, she'd said.

"You're far more likely to do that than I am," he had pointed out, thinking of how Serena could start out the night with her feet at the bottom of the bed and head safely on the pillow and wake up the next morning with her head on the floor and her feet on her pillow. "Shouldn't we barricade _you_ off?"

She had bristled at this idea. "I wouldn't squish my own daughter! We females sense our children's presence. It's mother's intuition!"

He had laughed at the time, but now he just eyed the pillows dolefully. The pillows kept him away from Rini, it was true, but more importantly, they kept him Serena. "Couldn't we…?" he began, then saw that Serena was absentmindedly fluffing the barricade pillows with one hand as he spoke. His lip jutted out further. "Never mind. I'm just going to go watch the news in the living room for a bit." He leaned forward to give her knee a dutiful pat, facing away because he didn't quite want to look at her, he felt…unhappy with her…

A palm pressed flat against his stomach.

He went still, his hand freezing on her knee, looking down at the small hand splayed across the thin white fabric of his t-shirt.

"Darien," came her soft voice from behind him, and there was a note of mischief in it that matched the way her fingertips wiggled tauntingly against his abdominal muscles, "are you…_pouting_?"

Darien sat up straight. The friction the movement created between her hand and his body was painfully delicious. "What? No." He turned to look at her. The motion created more friction, making him tense and tighten, wetting his lips.

She pushed herself up on one elbow, a mischievous smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "You are."

One side of her nightgown had slipped down one shoulder. Still acutely aware of her warm hand against his stomach, he followed the line of her clavicle with his eyes – then forced himself to look away, feeling simultaneous satisfaction with himself (he still had his younger self's ridiculously iron self-discipline) and aggrievement (he shouldn't have to discipline himself, dammit! She was his wife!). "I'll be in the living room–"

"Oh no you don't." Her hand bunched in his shirt and stopped him as he began to get up. Pulled off balance, he sat abruptly back down on the bed. "Get over here, you."

He wasn't sure how she did it, considering she had been lying down, but suddenly she was sitting up and pulling him into a kiss, down into her mouth. His opened immediately, slanting, and he shifted, twisting around to face her fully without breaking the kiss, leaning forward, forward, until his hand was planted next to her waist and she was easing slowly back onto her back among the pillows, and he was following her, not letting even a molecule of air into the space between them, much less a pillow.

It was some time later that she broke away, her eyes dark and clouded, and against his jaw she murmured, "Okay. We'll put her in the bassinet."

Triumph broke across Darien's face like a beam of light across dark water, and he turned his head just enough that Serena could keep breathing her soft, warm little air-kisses against his neck as he lifted the hand that wasn't entwined in her hair to motion at Rini. A cushion of air lifted the sleeping infant from the mattress and floated her safely into the frilly bassinet next to the bed. Once she was safely in the contraption (and out of his way with Serena) he was able to admit that she was, after all, a rather wonderful baby, certainly wonderful enough to merit all of Serena's fascination, but in the end, he thought happily as Serena's lips touched his ear, Serena was still _his_…As he had this thought, he could not help looking smugly back at the bassinet and –

"Darien." Serena pulled away abruptly. "Are you sticking your tongue out at Rini?"

Darien went still, flushing guiltily. "No."

Serena raised an eyebrow at him but only said, "Good." She pulled his head back down to hers. "Because you're supposed to use it on _me_."

THE END


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N**: This vignette is weird and too much, probably. But the idea has hung on for months, and I'm sick of trying to rewrite its weird too-muchness. All I can say is maybe (hopefully) it will make sense by the end…?

It takes place before the first sock vignette. There are reference to Darien's brainwashing in Volume 2 of the manga. Also, for those who don't know, in the anime, Fish-Eye was a male villain who had the hots for Darien in the anime.

**Disclaimer**: Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi. The slightly altered dialogue below is from _Sailor Moon R: Promise of the Rose_

S

_ "You've lived alone…without your family…all this time?"_

_ "That's right."_

_ "Were you lonely?"_

_ "I'm not lonely anymore. You're my family now, Serena. I feel like I was waiting all by myself to meet you."_

S

Serena hasn't felt this bad since the time that she lost the Moon Wand. Luna nearly scalded her ears off with scolding for misplacing _that_ valuable item. But the loss of her Luna Pen upsets Serena ten times more.

It has been missing since Tuesday. Today is Friday, and tonight is the benefit gala for the new pediatrics wing at the hospital where Darien works. Serena needs a dress. She has put off finding one until this afternoon, hoping that the Luna Pen would show up.

But it hasn't.

Her fellow assistant editor and her secretary, who are both obviously confused by their usually well-dressed friend's panic over finding an outfit, suggest that she take a look in the wardrobe room. Their supervising editor occasionally allows them to wear the outfits so long as they swear not to tear, strain, stretch, or in any way damage the outfits.

Serena thanks them for the suggestion but declines it. She tells them that with her tendency to trip and spill things, she's too terrified to risk wearing one of the wardrobe items.

But the truth is that she has already tried on a few of the dresses in there, and _they don't fit_.

This alone is enough to send stress and unhappiness stumbling through her. On several times, she has stood in for an absent model so that someone can make a quick alteration on a dress or get a picture, and none of the outfits–except some of the bustier ones–have ever not fit. But today, she couldn't even get any of the dresses past her hips, much less zip them shut around her waist.

So as Serena nail-bites over where she will find a flattering formal dress in less than two hours, she is worrying, too, about what she has been eating lately, if she hasn't been getting enough exercise, and the answers are a lot, she always eats a lot, and no, she never exercises, she just runs around fighting youma. Or she used to. Is that the problem? Does she need to join a gym? Has Darien noticed? He has not been home much lately, too busy at work, she thinks with a bitterness she tries to ignore, but even so, he is usually unfailingly observant. Has he thought that she's been getting fat? Why hasn't he said anything? Or is that why he told her not to eat that third waffle this morning? She thought he was just teasing her, but maybe…

Mortification is flooding her. The instant that the clock's minute hand hits four-thirty, she is rushing out of the building, taking the stairs instead of her usual elevator, because maybe she can shed a pound or two before she gets to the mall to try on dresses?

On this note, she decides to walk to the shopping center in the more conservative part of Harajuku. No, even better: she runs.

And for a while, she feels like her old self, sprinting around in high heels like she used to in her high-heeled Senshi boots. But this relaxation is quickly swallowed up again by apprehension as she bursts, panting, into the first dress shop. What if nothing fits her?

She is normally a size two or smaller–or at least she was the last time she went shopping for clothes, which was nearly two years ago. But none of the Luna Pen's clothes come with size tags on them, so she could be bigger now than she was then without even knowing it.

Still, directed by some masochistic magnetism, Serena gravitates toward the size two racks and begins riffling through the fabrics. Within hurried minutes, she has eight promising specimens draped over her arm. She ducks into a dressing room, hurriedly steps out of her wrinkled pantsuit, and grabs the first dress.

It is cherry blossom pink, like the mandarin-collared dress she wore to Rei and Asanuma's wedding a few years back. As Serena pulls it up her legs, the silken material seems to gasp, trying to get past her hips. She sucks in her stomach, trying to get the dress up high enough to zip the back.

But it stays stubbornly stuck at her thighs. She gives up, wriggling out of it, and sucks in her stomach to try on the next one.

The next two dresses get stuck at the same spot as the first one. The fourth one, although it gets past her waist, won't zip shut at her chest.

_It's ugly anyway_, she tells herself, biting her lip. She tries on the fifth dress. It squeezes her chest so tightly that it looks like she has a quadri-boob.

Sixth one. Doesn't even get past her thighs.

Seventh one. A size four that she picked because a pit in her stomach as she chose the dresses told her that none of the size two's would fit. Even this size four doesn't get past her hips, though. Champing down on her trembling lower lip, she tells herself it doesn't matter because the eighth one is a size four, too, and it will definitely fit.

The eighth one tears at the side seam as she struggles to zip it.

S

"Furuhata-san, there's a call for you!"

"I'm coming!" Lita calls, folding the last of her restaurant menus. She wipes her hands on the apron at her waist. The dinner rush is about to start, but her assistant gets to deal with it tonight. Lita is catching the six-thirty train to Nakano with Motoki to go see a kendo tournament. Serena bought the tickets for them as an anniversary present.

Lita pauses, hands curling in her apron. What if it's Motoki calling? His dad has had him working horrible hours lately at the new restaurant they just opened. He better not be cancelling on her.

She goes into her office and shuts the door quietly. Then she picks up the phone. "Hello?"

S

Lita's voice saying "Hello?" is the most beautiful thing that Serena has ever heard. She sniffles, tries to say "hello" back, and bursts into tears instead.

"Serena?" says Lita with alarm lifting her voice. "Is that you? What's wrong? What happened?"

Serena takes a deep breath that breaks in the middle, takes another one, and then spills out a halting, sob-punctuated description of her situation.

"Shit," says Lita when she finishes. "Serena, sweetheart, this is why girls aren't supposed to go dress-shopping alone, remember? Just hang on, I'll be right there, and we'll find something – "

"No, we won't," Serena nearly wails, hiccupping and knowing that she sounds like a spoiled little kid but unable to stop. "There's just – ugly dresses – that everyone will look at and think – '_She_'s supposed to – work at a fashion magazine?' "

"Okay. Okay." Lita sounds a little panicked. "Well, remember, they make all the sizes smaller these days. A size two now isn't what a size two was back when we were in school. So how about this, do you have any dresses still at home? Your parents' house, I mean?"

Serena sniffles, feeling like there is suddenly a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. "Some," she admits. Then she remembers something, and she lets out a fresh wail. "Lita! The kendo tournament is tonight! I'm so sorry! I – " Another hiccup. " – forgot! I'm sorry – " Another hiccup, this one very miserable. "You have to catch the train. Don't – worry about this."

"Like hell," says Lita. "It won't hurt Motoki and me to go by rooftop. He's been putting on some love handles lately anyways. I'll drop by your mom's house, pick up the dresses, and drop them off at your place, okay? You just get yourself cleaned up and home, and when you get there, you'll have a dress you'll look so gorgeous in that even Fish-Eye would want a piece of you."

Serena swallows her last sniffle. "Okay," she says determinedly.

"That's my girl."

S

Lita is true to her word. When Serena gets home, the dresses from her closet at her parents' house are draped over the front table. A sense of relief begins to swell inside her, shooing the unhappiness away like a clucking maternal figure.

But Darien comes into the front hall, fastening his cuff links, as she slips off her shoes. "You couldn't find a dress?" he says. For some reason, this sounds accusing to Serena. Her unhappiness rushes back full-force.

"No," she says shortly and stomps upstairs with the waterfall of tulles and silks frothing over her arms.

She shuts the bedroom door firmly behind her and claws impatiently through the dresses until she finds the one that she had been thinking about. The one that she wore at Rei and Asanuma's wedding, with the pale pink and mandarin collar and slits up the legs. It's one of her only old dresses that, thanks to the slits, doesn't look totally childish or, thanks to the lack of sequins, like something she had worn to prom.

But, although it does go over her waist – snugly, mind – the pink dress won't zip shut around her chest.

She stares silently at the mirror, her eyes brimming again. Lita's plan hasn't worked.

_Nothing_ is working.

God, what does she usually do in situations like this?

The problem is that she can't _remember_ any situations like this! When was the last time she didn't have the Luna Pen to automatically dress her up in something pretty that fit perfectly? Not since her first year of high school – and if she hadn't had her Luna Pen before that, at least she had her mom to go with her to the mall to help her find a dress and tell Serena how beautiful she looked even when she didn't, and smooth away all the creases and uncertainties… Serena drops onto the bed, her hands clenched in her hair.

She wants her mom.

The clock's hands point impatiently at six forty-five. Serena clenches her fingers tighter, unable to understand why she is so upset but unable to push the feelings away, even though she takes deep breaths. Her eyes are still hot and wet.

She curls into a fetal position on the bed…and her cheek brushes something red and silky.

Serena sits up. Pulls the bit of red silk from beneath the fountain of other fabrics.

A little of the desperation drains from her heart.

It is the dress that her mother wore to her cousin's wedding. It's the same style as Serena's pink one, mandarin-collared and slit on the sites, but made for her mother's curvier figure and with graceful golden dragons embroidered across it instead of the white flowers that decorate Serena's pink one. It must have accidentally been put into the closet with Serena's dresses, and Lita had grabbed it.

The crimson fabric will make her look a little faded, with her pale skin and light hair, but if she applies enough eye shadow and eyeliner, it might not be too bad, she encourages herself. She struggles out of the pink dress, feeling the clasps catch at her hair, and pulls her mother's dress up over her legs. The silk flows as easily as water, cool against her flushed skin.

Her mother is taller than her, so the hem brushes her toes. She stands on her tiptoes as she zips the back – breathing a shaking sigh of pure relief as it shuts – and fastens the top button. Then, holding the fabric up with one hand, she gets to her knees to dig through her shoes in the closer. Several birthdays ago, Mina gave her an absolutely murderous pair of golden sandals. Serena has never worn them, too frightened of the five-inch stiletto heels, but she will need them for this dress. She finds them, still in their tissue-filled box, and falls back on her butt to strap them on. Then she grabs the bed to pull herself to her feet, wobbles to the mirror, and looks at herself.

She looks okay. Not amazing. As grateful as she knows she should feel simply to have found a dress that doesn't make her look like a total clown, she just feels tired. With stiff lips, she leans close to the mirror and begins to apply makeup, half of which has gone crusty in its containers because it has been so long since she used it.

Frustrated by the mascara, which only flakes on her eyelashes, she doesn't notice that Darien has come into the room until he speaks.

"What's wrong?"

Her eyes snap from the reflection of her eyelashes in the mirror to the reflection of her husband.

"Nothing," she says immediately, focusing on her eyelashes again and ignoring him. There is irritation surging up in her: _This is your stupid gala_, _I would be relaxing and reading a manga right now if it weren't for you_, _I've been bawling half the day and you haven't even noticed_, and a hundred other angry little thoughts burn through her mind.

"That face you were making didn't look like nothing, Odango," he says. His teasing tone is the one he uses every day, but today it _infuriates_ her.

"Oh?" she says and meets his eyes in the mirror, not smiling. "Well, I guess if _you_ say it's not nothing, then it must not be nothing."

He stares at her with a perplexed face that looks just hurt enough to make her feel a little twinge of guilt. But also a little tingle of satisfied vengeance. It is enough to make her return to applying her makeup without looking at him again.

She takes her hair out of its buns and brushes it out, letting the ripples cascade down her back. Here at last is something with which she can feel comfortable, of which she can feel proud. People have always admired her hair, Luna Pen or not. She sweeps it into a messy bun at the base of her neck, securing it with bobby pins and two red-lacquered chopsticks, not bothering to pin up the stray bits that fall from the bun and wisp around her face and neck. Then, with a swipe of the blood-red lipstick she stole from Rei God-knows-how-long-ago, she's ready to go.

S

Darien has been watching Serena apply her makeup in the mirror for the past five minutes, but he has been more concerned with puzzling out her strange mood than actually taking in how she looks.

Consequently, when she spins around and says, "I'm ready," he gets his first eyeful of her appearance.

Her eyes are lined black like an ancient Egyptian's. Golden eye shadow dusts her lids and streaks out a bit beyond the corners to make her blue eyes look darker, even larger, and more liquid than usual. Somehow, that gold and the crimson lipstick have made her hair look darker as well, a yellow-gold instead of light gold, and it makes it seem like the golden dragons embroidered on her sleek red dress are slithering out of the soft ringlets of her hair onto the silk.

And, as she takes a step toward Darien, her high heels clicking assertively on the floor, her face is almost level with his.

It is a strange, disconcerting feeling. It amplifies the uncertainty that entered him when he came in and saw her frowning into the mirror as though she was scrutinizing an enemy.

He feels almost afraid to do what he does next, which is reach out, cup her cheek, and say, "Serena, really, what's wrong?"

Her dark eyes flick to the side where his hand is touching her cheek, and then to him. There is a pause in which he feels her unhappiness like something suspended between them, heavy and throbbing like a heart.

Then she suddenly wobbles and heavily catches herself one of the bedposts. One of the slits of her dress parts, giving him a flash of slender leg, and he sees the monstrosities strapped to her feet.

"Serena, what are you wearing?" he demands, dropping into a crouch to grab her ankle and the dangerous-looking high heel strapped to it. "You can't walk in these, you'll kill yourself!"

Serena snatches her leg back, nearly gouging his arm. Her chin juts out defiantly; it makes her look more like the Serena he is used to. "Would I wear them if I thought I thought I couldn't walk in them?" she demands coolly.

Without giving him a chance to respond – his answer would have been a vehement _yes_ – she clomps past him.

He reaches for her. "Serena–"

She whips her head around and glares at him. It is not a mock-glare like the ones she usually directs at him. It is a glare that darkens her blue eyes, actual displeasure lurking in her pupils. More than anything else, it reminds him of the resentful looks Rini used to direct at him.

His hand falls to his side. His mouth stays open for a moment. Then he closes it. And feels very troubled. It has been a long time since he has had to force himself to be brave to talk to Serena.

"Jeez." Suddenly Serena has stopped and is swiping her eyes. Her voice is shaky. Darien feels simultaneously a pang of pain for her clear unhappiness and a surge of relief that she is going to tell him what's wrong.

But she doesn't tell him. She drops her hand from her face and stalks to the front door, swinging it open.

"Can we just go now?" she says without looking at him.

Too confused to speak, Darien mechanically grabs his tuxedo jacket and follows her down the front steps. His insides are knotted. He and Serena have fought before, certainly; they bicker all the time, but for her to be this angry–has something happened at work that she hasn't told him about? They haven't spoken much lately, he realizes suddenly; he has been at the hospital so often, carving a niche for himself among the older, more experienced doctors… With a stab of something like panic, he wonders if he should run back inside to the telephone and call one of her friends to ask if they know what's wrong.

But Serena is standing beside the car, tapping her high-heeled foot sharply, so he locks the front door hastily and goes to her.

She shoots him a look of such pure, Rei-like venom when he reaches out to open the car door for her that he almost flinches. He lets go of the door, lifting a placating hand in a peace gesture that she ignores, and goes around to the driver's side as she opens her door herself and slides into the leather seat.

The atmosphere inside the car is as chilly as the air outside. The ride to the benefit is silent. For the first time in his life, Darien finds himself looking forward to finding Asanuma at the benefit. Surely Serena's mood won't be able to last long around their babbling friend.

S

Almost as soon as they enter the gala, he is pulled away from Serena by the hospital resident director and her enthusiastic greeting. She is a tall, smiling woman with long, manicured nails that grip his arm and don't take "Give me just a moment, please" for an answer.

Darien tries to send Serena an apologetic look as he is tugged away. She turns away, toward a tray of champagne, without looking at him. Her aura, when he reaches for it through their rope, is like a fence of charged barbed wire that sizzles him immediately away.

It takes him fifteen minutes to escape the resident director and her group of polite pediatric specialists and loudly talking benefactors. He scans the glittering room for blonde hair and, after several moments, spots it on the side of the room opposite from the orchestra, at one of the tables lining the edge of the dance floor. A black-haired head is beside it.

The dance floor is crowded, making him uncomfortable as he edges his way through it with many "pardon me"s and trod-upon toes. He is desperate enough at this point to think that he will ask Serena to dance with him. She adores dancing, for all that she isn't the best at it, and he knows with a sudden wincing awareness that she does not get to do it as much as she would like because he is so averse to dance floors in general and to crowded dance floors in particular. Perhaps she will understand how very sincerely he wants to make up for whatever he had done if he asks her to dance in this very crowded environment. Yes, he's sure it will work, she will understand, and melt into his arms, her soft head beneath his chin and her warm breath fanning his collarbone through his starched collar the way it usually does, and everything will be fine.

With this scenario clearly painted in his mind, he emerges from the crush of people and stops in front of the table where Serena and Rei sit.

"Darien," says Rei, inclining her head in greeting.

"Rei," Darien says in response, managing to give her a glance of acknowledgement before his eyes return to Serena. "Serena, why don't we dance?"

"The shoot's going to be in April," Serena says. "Miaka-san was a little hard to work with last time, but Arima said she asked specifically for me for this shoot."

It takes Darien a moment to realize that she is talking to Rei. It takes him a moment longer to realize that she is ignoring him.

He shoots a bewildered look at Rei – who is, if the slightly arched eyebrow on her usually blank face was anything to go by, equally surprised and confused.

But she sides with Serena immediately, slipping her arm protectively around Serena's shoulders and eyeing Darien impassively.

Serena leans into her, her head beneath Rei's chin, and glances at Darien for the barest of seconds before taking a sip of champagne and looking around.

"Ready to dance, darl–?" Asanuma, bursting off the dance floor, stops short when he sees Serena and Rei.

He takes a step back, looking at them again. "Hmm." He slowly circles the table, walking backward so that he can inspect them. At last, he stops. "You two look like a pair of hot lesbians."

"I might decide to become one if you keep saying things like that," Rei says coolly.

Asanuma cracks a wide grin. "I didn't mean it, sweetheartdarlingcupcake. I wish I had a camera, though. The _yin_ and _yang _you two have going on right now is amazing."

"What _yin _and _yang_?" Serena says from behind the rim of her flute of champagne.

"Well, look." Asanuma circles the two women again, framing them between his thumbs and index fingers. "You've got Rei, the typical midnight seductress, looking serene and innocent in a white dress with her hair falling free and natural. Then you've got Serena, with her quintessential angel coloring and features, glowering and wearing a red dress with her hair imprisoned in a bun. The sheer irony of it!" He sighs happily. "And yet, notice the positioning: despite her gothic appearance, the angel is still being sheltered by the devil-turned-innocent!"

Unimpressed, Rei says, "Are you done yet?"

Asanuma pouts. "Fine, just come dance with my body, then, since my brain's no good at impressing you."

Rei looks down at Serena. It isn't often that Darien sees the lingering traces of authority that Serena still holds over her Senshi, but this is one of those times. Rei's eyes are asking permission.

Serena's chin lifts, imperiously. "I'm fine. Go."

With a reluctant look back at Darien, Rei takes Asanuma's hovering hand and glides onto the dance floor with him.

Darien transfers his eyes back to Serena. She is standing, draining her champagne as she sets off across the room. He follows quickly, seeing her put the empty flute on a waiter's tray as she sweeps past him on her way to the doors.

In the empty, quiet atrium, just before the doors, she stops. Turns slowly.

"Why are you following me?" Her voice is acid. "Do I _look_ like an evil queen?"

"You're acting like one." The sentence leaps out of him like air leaping out of his throat when he's been punched in the gut.

Which is what she just said to him felt like. She has _never_ thrown his brainwashings up at him like that.

She gives him a look that could have frozen a volcano. It freezes him, so that when she turns and pushes out the doors, he does not follow him.

S

Serena clips out of the museum, clattering down the front steps with a tread that hardly feels graceful. Her agitation sends the heel snapping off one of her shoes. She goes lurching to the left, catching herself on her hands and knees.

One of the valets sees and hurries forward to help her. But that only makes it worse, the humiliation exploding to her neck until she feels she might burst into flame. She cannot even give a polite smile to the valet, just an expression that is probably more of a grimaced snarl. She grabs up the hem of her dress and hurries down the rest of the steps, leaving Mina's gift behind. The Cinderella-ness of the situation doesn't escape her, nor does the fact that the prince isn't following her.

She goes to the only place she can think of.

The anger begins to ebb on the way. By the time she reaches the familiar front gate, Serena is swallowing sniffles instead of obscenities, feeling tired and miserable instead of furious.

She has a key to the door, but it is at home on her dresser next to her makeup, so she knocks. Only after she hears footsteps approaching to open the door does she remember the state she is in, her overdone, sloppy makeup probably running with all her tears, and her nose red, and Dad's going to jump to conclusions, but Darien hasn't done anything, not really, it's Serena's fault for being so upset about that gorgeously thin director woman and his job and her dress and the whole _day_ –

The door opens.

Her mother stands there, her face opening in a smile as she sees Serena, and then just as quickly closing into a look of concern as she takes in Serena's appearance.

Serena feels ashamed. Whether because of her appearance, because of showing up on her parents' doorstep like this, or because of how she has treated Darien, she doesn't know. But for the first time in her memory, she doesn't throw her sobbing self at her mother. She stands there stiffly instead, arms wrapped around her stomach, until her mom steps forward and envelopes _her_.

Ikuko doesn't ask questions. She just takes Serena into the kitchen, shooting a quelling look at Kenji, who is rising from the couch with a look of menace.

There are no freshly baked cookies waiting in the kitchen, the way there always were when she and Sammy were still living at home, and for some reason, the absence makes Serena cry harder. Ikuko rubs her back, shushing her soothingly, and Kenji brings a glass of cranberry juice mixed with ginger ale.

"It's the strongest drink us empty-nesters have on hand," he says as he hands it to her, squeezing her shoulder and hugging her to him.

She laughs shakily and hides her wet face in his sweater.

"Now," says Ikuko when she has calmed down a bit. "Are you going to tell us what's wrong, sweetheart?"

Serena doesn't want to move her face from where it is hidden in her dad's shoulder. Her parents' fussing over her has made the misery wringing her insides retreat a bit, and she doesn't want to think about it again lest it come charging back.

"Oh, my," says Ikuko, looking over Serena's shoulder at the calendar. "The hospital gala was tonight, wasn't it? That's why you're dressed up so beautifully. Did something happen? Where's Darien?"

Serena closes her eyes against her dad's sweater. "I left him behind."

S

Darien leaves the gala early, trusting Asanuma's promise to give everyone a good excuse for his early departure and trusting Rei's promise not to let Asanuma tell people that it was because he came down with a bad case of diarrhea.

Somewhere, beneath his layers of rationale, lurks the hope that when he gets home, Serena will be there. But the lights aren't on as he pulls into the driveway. Nor are her shoes in the front hall, where she likes to kick them off, as he pushes open the front door. The bedrooms, when he checks them, are all empty, as are the kitchen and living room.

Her cell phone sits on her dresser. Darien stands before it, his hand clenched beside the tubes of make-up that he was watching her apply less than two hours earlier. Inside him clamor the same instincts that drove him so many times to transform into Tuxedo Mask and rush to Sailor Moon's aid.

But muffling these memories are memories of silence.

Serena's cold silence as they drove to the gala. Her icy silence as she pretended he wasn't there and spoke to Rei instead. Her bone-chilling silence as she walked away from him.

He does not dare go to look for her. He is too afraid that she does not want him to find her.

Maybe, buried somewhere deep inside him like a coffin in the ground is still the orphan boy of years ago. The boy who was passed over again and again by prospective parents as if something in his eyes told them that they could never love him. The boy who was never chosen.

Maybe that boy is creeping up inside him, his icy fingers pushing up the lid that has contained him since Darien met Serena.

S

Both her parents are silent, even Kenji.

"What?" says Ikuko at last. "You left him behind?"

The catch in her voice makes Serena stop sniffling. Guilt and a feeling of _what have I done_? begin to rush in through the hole that all her crying has torn open inside her.

"I don't know why," she whispers, like a plea. "I've just been so–so mad, Mom. I felt like–like he wasn't paying any attention to me, and he didn't care, and I've been feeling so–" She hiccups, a sure sign that she is about to start crying again, "so _ugly_–"

"Oh, sweetheart. Serena, you could _never _be ugly." Ikuko's voice is soft, and the arms she puts around Serena's waist to hug her tightly are gentle. But her face is hard, her lips compressed. She is quiet for a moment, smoothing Serena's hair. "Has Darien been making you feel like that?"

As she asks, Ikuko looks over Serena's head at Kenji. She wears an expression as fierce as any of those Kenji gave Darien when he was dating their daughter, and she expects to see his expression mirroring her own.

But Kenji's face is not angry, or protective. It is shell-shocked. He is looking at Serena with his forehead creased, his eyes wide behind his glasses. It is a bereft, disbelieving sort of look, as though he has just woken up from a dream to find himself somewhere totally different from where he had expected.

He meets Ikuko's gaze. He blinks, seeming to pull himself back together. Then he readjusts his arm around Serena, hugging her shoulders more tightly. "Kiddo, I think you need to go home to Darien."

Both Serena and Ikuko stiffen with shock. Serena pulls back, away from him, her mascara-streaked eyes wide. "Dad?"

Kenji smiles at her gently, not taking his arm from around her shoulders "You're an adult now, right? And adults have to work together to figure out how to solve their problems. Mom and Dad can't fix them for you anymore."

Serena's mouth works as though she is going to say something. Kenji says more gently, "Mom and I don't mind if you come to use for a good cry. We're your parents, and we love to know you still need us, baby. But who is Darien supposed to go to?"

S

He doesn't know how long he stands in the dark bedroom, his fingers curled on her dresser. He only knows that at some point, there is a whisper of aura behind him. His gaze rises to the mirror mounted on the dresser. Serena's dark-eyes reflection looks back at him from the doorway.

The muscles in his hands tighten. He knows, suddenly, something of what she must have felt when his possessed corpse came back and spoke to her from under Beryl's control. There is relief and terror at the same time, hope and dread.

He looks away from her reflection, closing his eyes. When her hand touches his hesitantly, he pulls away.

Serena tries to swallow her guilt and hurt and speak around it. "Darien. I'm sorry. I–I shouldn't have left."

Silence. There is no answer. Only his reflection's eyes opening to pierce hers with a coldness she hasn't seen since his body was Beryl's. If she were in a lighter mood, she would have made a joke that she guessed she was going to be sleeping on the couch tonight, huh? But she's not, there's only her heart pounding in her mouth, the realization sour in her mouth that Darien, a Darien who has pulled away from her because of her own petty actions, is more terrifying than any Nega-creature she has ever faced.

"Then why did you?"

His voice is quiet, but it still makes her flinch. Her eyes skitter away from his, then back. There is something in them, in _him_, a near-pleading that may emanate more from the rope than from his cold gaze. It reminds her that it wasn't only as Endo that he has looked like this. It was as Darien, too, in the earliest days of their relationship, that he pushed her away to hide when he felt scared, or hurt, or…alone.

And it is her who has turned him back into that person, the one she knows he has tried so hard to leave behind. Not some evil Nega-queen – _her_.

There is no magic, no Moon Princess Halation or Starlight Honeymoon Kiss she can use to undo what she has done and make them okay again. All she can do is offer up what she has felt today, the horrible pettiness and ugliness and fear, and hope that it is enough, enough to excuse if not justify her, and enough to show him that she loves him, that she has just been afraid all day that he does not love _her._

Exposing the feelings – that she _knows_ are mostly ridiculous and stupid, but can't help feeling anyway – is like trying on those dresses at the shops, feeling horribly ugly in them, and walking out of the changing room into the store to let the whole world see that ugliness. Except it isn't the whole world, it's only him, but to her he is the whole world, and the shame of it all makes her cry.

Darien, for his part, is as confused by the intensity of her emotions as she was, and is. He can sense through the rope that she herself can't understand why she's been so sensitive, so sad, so angry today. If he were in a lighter mood he would make an Asanuma-like joke about it being that time of the month, but he isn't, and anyways he can sense that that's not the case, and so his first thought is that perhaps she is under some sort of outside mental or emotional influence.

But all he can sense is her and her unhappiness, still throbbing heavily between them. It makes him feel better. Her hiccups into his tuxedo shirt, her fingers clenching the fabric, they are making that orphan boy slide back down into his coffin, the earth close over him again.

"It's okay," he says over and over again. "I've got you. I love you. It's okay. It's okay."

It will be.

S

"Kenji," says Ikuko as they drive away from dropping Serena off. She has been as quiet as Serena for the drive there and for most of the drive back. "What are you not telling me?"

Kenji says nothing, just keeps driving. He looks distracted behind his thick glasses. Ikuko pokes his arm. "Kenji! Are you listening to me?"

"Huh?" He starts, nearly veering them into oncoming traffic in the opposite lane. "Agh!" He wrenches back into their lane. "What is it, honey?"

"That's exactly what I should be asking _you_!" If they weren't in the car, Ikuko's hands would be on her hips. "Why are you acting so strangely? You've never been so supportive of our son-in-law before."

Kenji sighs, then flicks on the blinker and pulls over to the side of the road. He turns to face her, his expression mostly hesitant, but little glimmers of a smile tug every few seconds at the corner of his mouth. "Dear, do you remember that October a little after our first anniversary when you blew up at me for forgetting to pick up milk from the grocery and went and stayed with your parents for a week? And how even when you came back you were pretty touchy–?"

Ikuko is bristling. "I do not _blow up_–" Then her eyes go wide, and her hand flies to her mouth. "Oh. _Oh_! Kenji, you don't really think–?"

He is grinning. "I do."

Ikuko squeals.

S

Two weeks later, when he is doing a load of laundry, Darien pulls something out of the dryer.

A little white sock.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N**: This is one of my favorite vignettes. It's been written for forever.

I have gleaned from my obsession with Naruto and Bleach that _taichou_ means "captain" in Japanese. (I think. It may or may not be entirely accurate.) Anyway, you need to know this to understand the joke that precipitated this vignette.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

L

"No."

"Darieeeeeen…" Serena whined. "Come ON. It's not like you have anything better."

"ANYTHING is better."

"Oh, so Darien Jr. would be better than Leonardo?"

Darien nearly choked on the gum in his mouth.

A stockboy putting canned peaches on the shelf glanced over at him with vague alarm.

"I thought so," said Serena with grim satisfaction, putting a hand to her round belly.

One-handed, for he was holding a sleeping Rini, Darien fished his movie ticket from his pocket, spat his gum into it, and stowed it back in his pocket to throw away later. He had the feeling that this was going to be One of Those Conversations. The kind during which Serena said things that could easily make him choke on his own tongue, much less a foreign object like a piece of gum.

In fact, he'd known since she announced ten minutes ago, as they got into the car to drive home from the movies, that she needed Angus beef hamburgers, NOW, that this was going to be One of Those Nights.

He hitched Rini up in his arms. "What about naming him Kenji?"

The Look that Serena sent him resembled the face that Rini had made when Motoki had asked her if she wanted a Barbie doll for Christmas.

"Sweetheart, has an evil slut brainwashed you again?" she said sweetly.

Darien winced. It had been so long since the last time Serena was pregnant – four years ago – that he'd forgotten just how Rei-like she could get during her mood swings.

Although he actually suspected that she didn't really suffer from uncontrollable bad mood swings and that she just used pregnancy as an excuse to punish him for all those times he'd forgotten who she was.

Which, admittedly, had happened so frequently that he might deserve the abuse.

"No," he said carefully in response. "I just thought your dad might be happy to have a grandson named after him."

"That's Sammy's job." Serena stalked down the aisle. "I won't have a son named Kenji when Lita had an ex named Ken. That's just awkward and totally against the Girl Code."

Darien rolled his eyes. "Well, we're not naming him Leonardo."

"It's that or Michaelangelo," Serena declared. "Raphael was too moody, and I'm not naming him Donatello. The males in this family already wear too much purple as it is." She sent him an Evil Eye to make it clear that she was referring to the lavender cloak his future self had been wearing in Crystal Tokyo.

Darien rolled his eyes again. "When did it become a rule that you get to name our son after one of the Ninja Turtles?"

"When he was conceived in MY body and made MY waist turn into a giant balloon," Serena retorted. "Ooh, here we are – _Asanuma_?"

The blond man rocking back and forth on his heels in front of the ice cream in the frozen section spun around. "Hey hey heeeey!" he exclaimed in greeting, just a little too enthusiastically. "What are you guys up to?"

Darien and Serena exchanged glances

"Just picking up some protein," Darien said, shifting Rini in his arms. "What about you?"

"Oh, you know. Rei sent me out for some late-night ice cream."

"Ohhh." Serena nodded knowingly, hand on her hip. "That's why you're holding a box of tampons behind you?"

Asanuma flushed. "Damn it, you guys! Don't say anything about this, okay? She'd kill me if she found out you saw me – "

Darien smirked. "Whipped much?"

"Ha ha," shot back Asanuma. "Who's the one letting his wife name his son after cartoon turtles?"

"They had live-action movies!" said Serena defensively. Then she blinked. "You heard all that?"

"You weren't exactly being quiet," said Asanuma. "I'm surprised you didn't wake Rini up."

"If you heard us, why didn't you come say hi?" demanded Serena.

Asanuma gave a pointed look to the pink box still half-hidden in the crook of his elbow. Then he cleared his throat. "No offense, Serena, but you definitely shouldn't name your first son after a Ninja Turtle."

"Hear, hear," said Darien.

"After all, you always said you'd name your kids after the Digidestined," Asanuma continued. "Didn't you?"

Darien groaned. He had so fervently hoped that no one would remember that.

"I DID," Serena gasped, her eyes glowing. "I remember!"

"I, for one, think the name Tai would be a marvelous choice," said Asanuma. "I was always a fan of his goggles."

"Who wasn't?" said Serena warmly. The she caught sight of the burger patties that had precipitated this midnight trip to the store. She opened the door and reached for them, shooting Darien a look as she did so. "Except a CERTAIN someone."

Darien rolled his eyes yet again and jiggled Rini surreptitiously. He was certain that if she woke up, she would be on his side. But she slept on, even beginning to snore in his ear, Serena's daughter that she was. Little traitor.

"By the way, Asanuma, those aren't the kind of tampons Rei likes," Serena said. "Let's go, I'll show you the right ones."

Darien sighed. He did not have the fortitude to follow them down the dreaded feminine hygiene aisle, even if it meant surrendering Serena to Asanuma's encouragement of a Digidestined name without him there to make the necessary protests. So he headed for the check-out lane with the burger patties.

As it turned out, he paid dearly for his lack of fortitude. By the time she and Asanuma came back out of the feminine hygiene aisle, this time with a red and white box, Serena's mind was firmly decided on naming their son after the first Digidestined, and nothing Darien could say – or bribe her with – succeeded in changing her mind.

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Thus it was that, two months later, Tai Shields was born.

It was approximately two hours after the joyous occasion, when Asanuma and Rei came in to join the proud parents and Rini, who had stayed with them during the five-hour delivery, that Darien found out the real reason Asanuma had suggested naming the baby Tai.

"What's that?" the blond man exclaimed gleefully as he reached for the baby boy, bending closer to his pudgy face as though to listen to something he was gurgling. "You want Uncle Numa to hold you? Right away, Tai-_taichou_!"

Darien, horrified, heard a squeak of shock escape his mouth.

Serena, still high on adrenaline and painkillers, howled with laughter.

Rini, embarrassed by both of them, exchanged an embarrassed look with Aunt Rei.

Asanuma cackled – until a pudgy fist flailed out of the baby blanket and hit him in the nose.

This rejuvenating sight restored Darien's control of his vocal cords. "Ha," he said with satisfaction, snatching his son back from Asanuma. "Here's a kid who recognizes evil when he sees it."

"Would you expect any less from a _taichou_?" said Asanuma with a grin, rubbing his nose.

"Don't call him that." Darien scowled.

"Let Taichou's mother hold him." Serena was the one scowling now.

"Don't call him that!" Darien's voice was half scolding, half horrified that Serena, though looking quite lucid now, was joining in. "I won't let any of you hold him until you call him by his name!"

But despite Darien's best efforts, Asanuma's nickname stuck. To such an extent, in fact, that Tai thought it was his real name, and corrected his kindergarten teacher when she took role call on his first day of school, telling her indignantly that she needed to call him "Taichou Shields."

_That_ led to an interesting parent-teacher conference.

It was when he was eight years old that Tai, who was smart enough to suspect from the way Uncle Asanuma always called him Tai-_taichou_ with such delight that he knew there must be something special about his name, asked his father how he and Mom had decided what to name him.

Did Darien tell him the truth? Hell no. He just said they had heard the name somewhere and thought it sounded nice.

Did Darien ever feel guilty about lying to his son? No. What he _did_ feel was that finding out his mother had decided on his name while she helped his uncle pick out tampons was something that no boy needed to know.

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**A/N:** I played with making Tai's middle name Endymion. But I don't know if Sere and Dare would do that. What do you guys think?


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N**: I was hesitant about writing these next vignettes but also eager, because I can picture Darien and Serena's family quite clearly like this. Tell me what you think of the addition to the family. Totally inconceivable? Ha ha, bad pun.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon or any other proper noun.

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Their son's birth is the first time they see a bit of the Rini they once knew emerge from their daughter's personality.

"He's fat," she says in an unimpressed, rather suspicious tone, when she peers over the edge of the hospital bed at the little creature with the cap of black hair.

It is one of the first few times since she learned to talk that she has said so few words at once, instead of following them with a rush of chatter. Serena and Darien exchange glances over the top of their children's heads.

Baby Tai has Serena's bright blue eyes, but they are almost buried by his chubby cheeks. Not like Rini's eyes, which peeked out from beneath their lids even as she slept.

"But that just makes him even more adorable, don't you think?" Serena says, cuddling her four-year-old daughter closer against her hospital gown.

She has given Tai to Darien to that she can hold Rini, and Darien realizes, seeing the jealous set of his daughter's face, that this was probably a good idea. He was reluctant at the time, to take his son from Serena, as frightened to hold him as he had been to hold Rini when she was first born.

But their boy feels sturdier in his arms, a nice heavy nine-pound weight that somehow reminds him of the quarter-pound cheeseburgers that Serena has been craving for the past nine months.

Darien holds the infant closer, taking a glance at the door. Getting to hold Tai himself means that when Asanuma and the others burst in – as they will undoubtedly be doing very soon – Darien will be able to keep the baby from getting passed around like a hot potato, the way Rini was after she was born.

He can already feel quite certainly, from the man-to-man bond he can practically sense weaving between himself and his son, that the baby would not approve of being surrendered to the squealing, nap-interrupting, estrogen-filled fate that would surely befall him if Lita and the girls were allowed to hold him. _Or _of being tossed around by Asanuma.

Darien shudders, remembering how Asanuma almost dropped Rini the day she was born, and how Rini had actually _giggled_ instead of bursting into tears or going wide-eyed with shock like a normal child.

No, he thinks with a decisive nod of his head, he wouldn't let that happen to this little guy.

Rini's voice breaks him out of these thoughts. "Will he always be this fat?"

Again with the tone of disdain, Darien notes with a slight smile.

"Of course not!" says Serena. Then she pauses, tapping her chin. "But if he is, you can be his coach and exercise him into shape! How does that sound?"

Darien's hold on Tai tightens. He raises his eyes to Serena's with disbelief and no little amount of betrayal. Who does she think she is, Coach Etoukou?

Rini's frown deepens, then abruptly clears.

"Okay!" she says happily. There is a glint in her blue eyes that Darien recognizes very well. He realizes that the first time they see a bit of the future Rini in their Rini is the day that he sees an even bigger bit of Serena in Rini.

And, well, all he can think is that the second man of the family came none too soon.

"We've got a long battle ahead of us, kiddo," he mutters in Tai's ear, holding him closer as Serena and Rini grin evilly at them both.


End file.
